


Penitent Dolls

by jatty



Category: My Chemical Romance
Genre: Abandonment, Aftermath of Torture, BDSM, Bad BDSM Etiquette, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Rape Aftermath, Sexual Abuse, Sexual Slavery
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-12-20
Updated: 2016-03-06
Packaged: 2018-03-02 09:42:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 19
Words: 65,702
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2807948
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jatty/pseuds/jatty
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Frank had been a follower of Father X and Submissive G's BDSM blog for longer than he'd care to admit, so when Father X offers to share his slave with anyone who shows up at the Jailer's Den sex club, Frank has no choice but to attend. Though nerves make him late to the show, what Frank witnesses is enough to make him see that the relationship he's been following for years is not nearly as pristine as it had appeared on the screen. So what is he supposed to do when he sees a key taped to the door of a bathroom stall and finds Submissive G handcuffed inside and unconscious? Well, he can't just send him back home with a sadist! This whole thing would be a lot easier if Gerard would do more than stare at him with eyes like glass...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Jatty a bad, bad writer who likes to start new fics even though she hasn't finished the four she already has ongoing. 
> 
> This is my first time writing a fic about the BDSM culture and I am bound to make a few mistakes, so just be gentle! It's not my intention to represent the culture in a negative light, but there are a few people who misuse the culture as a way to manipulate and injure other people without fear of the law. This is a story about them.

_Chapter 1_

Frank looked at porn _maybe_ a little bit more than he liked to admit. He didn’t consider himself perverted — well, he didn’t consider himself _twisted_ perverted. Before one stupid mistake lost him his partner of two years, he'd had a normal sex life and hadn't needed to constantly surf for porn. Now, without anyone around for company, he found himself lonely…and horny. He had a lot of flings (more than he could count) but nothing ever seemed to catch like it had with his last partner. Frank liked to be a dom first and foremost, but he also liked being a boyfriend. It seemed he could only find lovers who were seeking one of the two. There were a lot of boys and girls looking to play submissive for the night before getting back to their clean cut day jobs, and just as many nice, clean cut boys and girls who thought he was cute but wanted no part in any of his fantasies. 

Even before his last relationship had gone to shit, Frank had been a regular visitor of one site in particular. He’d found it in its infancy when it had been nothing but dry rhetoric about what BDSM culture meant to the mod and his submissive, but it had gotten steamier and steamier with each new post. 

It had been given a name as dry as its first posts: Father X and Submissive G. But on its four month anniversary, it had been given a sultry subtitle coined by Father X’s darling little slut. 

_Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned._

It was so simple, but the image of a severely caned backside which joined the subtitle on the website’s banner gave it that little extra kick. What turned Frank on even more was that it wasn’t some stock image of a harsh caning, it was a personal photo. It was a picture of Submissive G.

At first, Father X had taken all the precautions to prevent his little whore’s image from getting out, but then one day—conveniently for Frank, two days after his lover dumped him—Father X posted an image of his sub kneeling on the floor with his knees spread, his arms bound behind his back and a ball gag forced into his mouth with the caption: “This disrespectful slut doesn’t deserve its privacy.”

After a small amount of community backlash—Submissive G had been crying in the photo and looked less than pleased about his photo being taken—Father X had allowed G to address his fans in a short letter. 

_I love Father, and Father loves me. He would never do anything he knows I won’t like or that he feels isn’t good for me. Father punished me for saying I wasn’t pretty enough for him. He said I deserved to have my face put on display for the whole world to see so that I would know I’m beautiful and would never insult Father again by saying he had an ugly slave. Thank you all for being so concerned about me, but please know that I love Father, and Father loves me._

That had been the only time Submissive G ever referred to himself as “I.” Every time after that he referred to himself in third person as “the whore” or “the slut.” It was touching, and it played into Frank’s favorite part of his secret culture. Yes, he loved the whipping and the screaming and the crying—he loved what it felt like to have a needy little whore at his beck and call—but he had trouble getting off to videos where the chemistry between the doms and subs was wrong. He liked to see the trust between master and slave. He loved to see fear in the submissive’s eyes, but not terror. When it looked too much like rape, Frank got sick to his stomach. 

It was rare that he ever found a video where a submissive used a safeword, but in Father X’s videos, it happened all the time. Their relationship was _real._ They didn’t film their sessions for the cameras and their gestures weren’t scripted. When G’s screams got shrill and he pulled at his bindings, Father X would step back and give his little whore a moment to calm down. 

In one video, Submissive G had been gagged but had still been babbling out muffled words that sounded like pleas. At one point, Father X had switched from flogging to paddling, and after the third strike his submissive screamed out a barely comprehensible words. It sounded like nothing to Frank, and yet Father X had immediately stopped. He didn’t make a show of throwing the paddle down or becoming frustrated. He just let the paddle fall from his hand and rushed to stroke G’s hair, shushing him, kissing the top of his head and then undoing the ball gag. 

“I’m sorry, Father—I’m so sorry.” The sorrow in his voice should’ve made Frank lose his arousal, but it just put him that much more in the mood. It wouldn’t ever get him off, but it certainly didn’t slow him down. 

“You did good. Don’t be sorry. You did good.” Father X made a show of pulling G to his chest and stroking his hair until his submissive stopped weeping and had settled into quiet sniffles. “Do you want to finish or are you done?”

His submissive stammered and it took several times for Frank to catch on that what he’d said had been, “I don’t want you mad, Craig.” Or maybe it had been Greg, or Ted. Whatever it was, Submissive G had spoken his owner’s true name. Frank had expected him to get beaten for it the first time he watched the video, but Father X only shook his head and stroked G’s hair a few more times. 

“Go lay down in our room. We’re done for tonight.” He kissed his submissive’s cheek and then the video cut out. Of all the clips, this one had the most comments, people gushing over how cute the couple was as much as they commended Father X for being so diligent with his aftercare. 

Frank was sad to say the newer videos weren’t like that anymore. He never showed clips of his aftercare and a lot of the old subscribers had left because of it. Frank remembered one comment on a very brutal face-slapping, mouth-fucking clip which read “It’s like you’re completely different people. He’s /crying/, and not because he’s sorry for some stupid rule break. Don’t you even care about him anymore? This isn’t sexy, this is senseless and cruel. I’m done.” That user never posted again, but had been replaced in recent months by subscribers who fed on the violence. 

Instead of the praising comments G used to get on his personal, public letters, he now got disturbing requests and descriptions of what the viewers wanted to do to him. Frank couldn’t say he was particularly fond of the shift, but some of the images those commenters put in his head were incredible. 

Frank probably would’ve left the blog behind in search of a better one if not for clips like _these._ Once a month or so Father X posted “Classic Videos” from before the blog had been started. They showed G before he was a trained submissive as he tried to learn how to act, before he had much of a pain tolerance. G _always_ safeworded in those videos and Frank fucking loved it. 

After a long, shitty day at work, Frank came home and started his computer, hand already in his pants as he worked himself up. His efforts were rewarded with the single most attractive video title he’d ever seen come out of Father X’s site. 

“Baby Virgin’s First Time.”

Baby? Virgin? _First time?_ It was affectionate. It was intimate. 

G had been a virgin when he and Father X met up? Was that even _possible?_ How could X have been so lucky!? A virgin to teach and train…Frank couldn’t imagine how incredible that had to feel.

And he’d managed to get that on film?

No way. There was no way.

And yet the description said otherwise. 

_Before he was my sub, G lets me fuck his tight, virgin ass. Happy birthday to my G-baby. With you, every time feels like the first._

“Aw,” Frank said, almost feeling too sentimental to press play on the video. And once he had, the scene was so awkward he found himself laughing more than fluffing his semi.

In the video, G looked so different. His hair looked soft and shiny—clean for once without being caked in sweat and cum. He had on makeup, but just a little and kept passing shy, nervous glances to the camera—looking right at Frank with those big, pretty eyes. 

“I-I don’t… I don’t know,” G said, looking from the camera to Father X who stood just outside of the frame. 

“It’s okay, Baby. Don’t worry. No one’s gonna see.”

“Are you…sure? I mean—I… I don’t…” G started laughing and scratched at his forearms. He looked so shy—so different from the cock hungry painslut Father X put on display now. 

The camera angles were all wrong to get a good look at what happened, but when Father X finally joined him on the bed everything heated up fast. He was holding the camera in his hand and filmed it as he fingered G open and then rubbed the head of his cock against G’s ready hole. Father X made sure the camera was trained on G’s face as soon as he pressed in. 

It was so intimate and so fucking hot. Frank got to see the look of pain and fear that flashed through G’s eyes the very first time he was penetrated. Then he got to see that pain turn to pleasure, got to hear G’s moans. He got to see G cum for the first time from having a cock buried deep in his ass.

Frank moaned through his orgasm, not caring that he hadn’t given himself time to grab a tissue to stop the mess from getting on his desk. G was perfect. Everything about him was perfect and Frank wished he could have a submissive that was just like him—pure, innocent, but so, _so_ filthy underneath. 

( ) ( ) ( )

_My slut has been very, very bad. Come show my whore what happens to bad slaves who disobey their masters. Show G what mercilessness really looks like. Meet us at the Jailer’s Den, Camden NJ tomorrow night at 10p.m. for the live show and your chance to meet and fuck my worthless little whore. Bring your own toys or play with my fine selection to stretch his greedy fuckhole to the breaking point. G will have no limits. His skin is yours to slap, bite, burn or pierce. Make him sorry he ever disobeyed his Holy Father._

Frank didn’t know what disturbed him more, the fact that Father X was referring to himself as the Holy Father — comparing himself to _God_ — or that this invitation was posted just days after the loving video of Father X and Submissive G’s first time. 

He had never heard of the Jailer’s Den, but he got the address off Google and found that it wasn’t in the _worst_ part of Camden, but it was still in a bad place. Not a long drive at all from Frank’s apartment. He felt it was a bad idea to go, but he’d been watching Father X and Submissive G for so long and he knew that an opportunity like this would never come again. BDSM shows were always exciting for him, and to actually know the couple involved would be an amazing twist…

Plus it would be nice to get a good look at Father X’s face. All he ever saw was a mess of greying hair and a sculpted body. Father X, it seemed, was more camera shy than his slave. But then again, no one was forcing him to get in front of the lens. 

About an hour after the invitation was posted, Father X uploaded a clip of him and G together. He had G kneeling with the ball gag in his mouth, his arms tied behind him back as was common in his punishment videos. The first three minutes of the clip were just G’s muffled sobbing as he shook and trembled. 

The camera was then picked up off the table or tripod which had held it, and was moved closer and angled to get a better look at G’s wet, reddened eyes. 

“Don’t look at me like that, little whore,” Father X said, angling the camera down to get a good shot of G’s flaccid dick. “It seems my little baby…can’t get it up for me anymore. Huh?”

“He can’t get it up because he’s scared, asshole,” Frank muttered even though he knew Father X couldn’t hear him. 

The video progressed to show Father X whipping G’s penis and thighs with a riding crop until the flesh was red and engorged. It wasn’t brutal—G had definitely gotten worse—but it still made Frank shift uncomfortably in his seat. It was like watching a car wreck. He couldn’t look away. Even when G was sobbing and sniffling, lines of drool running down and dripping on the floor after working past the red ball in his mouth. 

It ended on that image with Father X repeating his offer for strangers to come teach his slut a lesson.

“And what do you say to the gentlemen, slut?” Father X asked, taking the gag out of G’s mouth and getting rewarded with a loud, heavy gasp. “What do you say, slut?” 

“Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned,” G whispered. 

“And?”

“And I want Father’s subscribers to teach me a lesson so I don’t…so I don’t mess up again.”

That meant he wanted it, right? He wanted punished. It was a scene. It was just a rough scene to promote a classic meet-and-fuck show at the Jailer’s Den, right?

Frank guessed there was only one way to find out…


	2. Chapter 2

_Chapter 2_

Frank cursed at himself, swearing harshly under his breath as he parked his car in the crowded lot of the Jailer’s Den. He’d told himself the whole drive over that it was unlikely anyone would show up. Maybe it was all some kind of a scam. Maybe he’d go in there and get murdered by a psychopath. He was late by over an hour, and was sure he was only going to catch the tail end of the show—or maybe nothing at all. If anything had been going on, it was likely that it was over by now. 

He was such an idiot for coming here… Why in the hell did he let himself go to Camden of all places for the chance to see and maybe get the chance to touch Submissive G. 

His car would probably be stolen by the time he left—but Frank still found himself getting out of the car and locking it. At the front door of the bar a man was standing smoking a cigarette. 

“’Ey. I need to see your ID, man. Can’t let just anybody in tonight. Got a show goin’ on.”

So Frank handed his ID over to the man who looked like he was tweaked out on meth and then went inside. Immediately the stench of sex hit him along with ear-splitting screams and the sound of a strap or a belt cracking down against flesh. The club had a bar along the side wall and all the tables were near it, leaving the other side of the bar an open space that had been filled with a crowd of men who were all shouting and cheering, almost as loud as the screams of their victim. 

Slowly, Frank crept closer, trying to talk himself up when slowly beginning to feel emasculated by how short he was in comparison to the other guys. 

“Open your mouth! Open your mouth, slut, or I’m gonna hold it open for you!” 

Frank backed off a step and then took a deep breath. He’d seen shows like this before, usually the submissive was into it. Usually the dom was nearby, sometimes even holding the sub’s hand through the whole ordeal if he felt the submissive needed it. Frank wanted to get a closer look to make sure that these were even the people he’d come here to see and to check if Submissive G was actually alright. 

Frank had no clue what his shrimp ass could do if it became obvious that G was in danger, but surely he couldn’t just stand and watch or cheer it on…

So Frank gritted his teeth and forced his way into the crowd of men, shouldering past them when they refused to move and cursing at one man who was angry to lose his space in the front. Once his focus was off of shoving his way to the front of the crowd, Frank finally looked up to see the display. 

And almost immediately regretted it. 

It was G alright, on his knees with his arms tied so tightly behind his back that his wrists were worn raw and his hands were turned a bright shade of red—near purple. His back was completely covered in painful looking lacerations that went down past his thighs, and his head was being forced back at an odd angle by one man while another violently thrust in and out of his mouth. G was screaming despite the intrusion, crying black streaks of eyeliner and mascara, his eyes so wide and frantic.

This was wrong. All of this was wrong.

Every time G would try to pull away, the man holding his hair—too large of a man to be Father X—would snap his head back, nearly breaking his neck more than once, until G submitted completely. He wailed instead of screaming, closing his eyes and twitching his fingers uselessly in an attempt to get free. When the man was finished with him, cumming right across G’s cheeks, he pushed him over and cheered triumphantly.

“This is sick,” Frank said.

“I know right!?” The man beside him cheered, missing Frank’s tone entirely and showing nothing but pure elation.

Frank looked back to G who had curled into the fetal position on the ground, screaming again in a way he never had before on Father X’s videos. He was scared and helpless—in desperate need of a gentle touch to reassure him that it was okay, that his punishment was over and he was a good slave, a good boy. 

Just as he was about to step up to offer that comfort, Father X appeared. He leaned down and instead of stroking his slave’s hair or patting him, he merely hoisted him back onto his knees by the shoulders and then untied his hands. G tried to reach for him—tried to _hug_ him—but Father X backed away before G could reach him. 

“Father! F-Forgive me. Please, Father.” G coughed between each word as if choking on them, and tried reaching out for his dom again. His body was shaking badly and he ended up falling forward onto his face, his arms unable to support his weight—no doubt numb from being tied for so long. 

“What do you men think? Has the slut learned its lesson?” Father X asked the crowd which cheered out a unanimous no. 

When the men swooped in on G again, hoisting him up and penetrating him as if he really were nothing more than an inanimate doll with no feeling, just a toy to be used and discarded. He wasn’t even able to scream out a protest before his mouth was stuffed again. Yes, Frank knew the allure of having a submissive who liked to be _treated_ like he or she meant nothing, like he or she was just a toy, but no one deserved to be raped in public. And that’s what this was.

Because G kept reached an arm for Father X who laughed and laughed and cheered the men on as if he didn’t notice—or as though he did see and the thought made him love it even more. G was reaching for his dom, wanting to back out when he couldn’t speak to use his safeword…if he was even allowed to use his safeword. 

When Frank had seen shows like this before, the submissive may cry or scream or try to get away, but there were breaks in between. There were times when the dom stepped in to say someone crossed a line or just to break it up so the sub could breathe for a moment. Maybe get something to drink or to get feeling back in one of its limbs. 

Maybe Frank just wasn’t hardcore enough for this scene, but he knew this was wrong. This wasn’t rough sex. This wasn’t a punishment. When G fell completely limp, supported only by the hands on his hips and in his hair, he wasn’t in sub-space. He was gone. His will had broken.

Frank turned away and started for the door, having seen too much and not wanting to see any more. But just as he was about to step out the doorway, there came a loud shout from outside followed quickly by another, then another as the tweaked out bouncer joined in. There was the sound of fists hitting fist, followed by the rapid, loud yells as the men outside went at it.

He couldn’t leave if there was fight outside lest he end up in the middle of it. 

“Fuck,” Frank whispered turning back around toward the crowd. He then passed a sideways glance to the next to abandoned bar where the bartender was playing with his cell phone. 

“Show too much for ya?” The bartender asked as he started making Frank a drink without him even asking. 

“Whatever, man,” Frank said, not about to get into it with a bartender like a drunken Hollywood movie star.

“Shoulda been here an hour ago. I almost called the cops.”

“Maybe you should’ve,” Frank said. 

“Can’t. Dude signed a waiver on the way in. He consented.”

“That doesn’t look like consent to me.”

“So why not leave?” The bartender said, setting a blue drink down in front of Frank o the bar.

“There’s a fight going on outside. I don’t want shot.”

“This is Camden. There’s a fight out there every ten minutes.”

Frank took a sip of his drink and found it to be horribly sweet—almost like koolaid—but kept drinking anyway. Anything to drown out the shrill cries that started mounting again when someone started whipping G with another belt. 

“It’s gonna be over in about fifteen minutes. If they don’t quit on their own, I get the honor of doing it for ‘em,” the bartender said.

“Where’s the owner?” Frank asked, looking back over at the crowd. “With them?”

“Yep. Boss Man got to go first. He always does.”

“That’s gross,” Frank said, sighing and staring down at his drink. He wanted to finish it, but had a feeling that there was enough booze in that cup to keep him incapacitated for a night and he still needed to drive home. 

“Gross is gonna be cleanin’ up that floor once they’re done. Guy’s got blood and piss and god knows what else all over the place.”

Frank grunted and took another sip from the cup. The cheers erupted again at the same time that G let out his loudest scream yet which broke off into a pained sob that made Frank cringe. Father X started shouting out some words of appreciation to all the men who had helped to “put his slave back in its place,” and then the crowd started filing out.

“Off to get hookers down the street,” the bartender said. “Last call was at the top of the hour.”

“Then why are you serving me?” Frank snapped.

“I gave you the fish bowl—it’s all the booze from my almost empty bottles I would’ve had to pitch anyway. Mixed in some blue liquor and some sweet n sour and there you have it.”

“Well thanks,” Frank said. 

The two made small talk as the crowd shuffled out. Frank overheard Father X talking with whom he assumed to be the club owner and after a bit more noise—including G groaning and mewling in pain as he was pulled onto his feet—everything went quiet. 

“Benny—you’re on cleaning duty. I’m goin’ back in my office. Pull your til. Get that guy outta here.”

“Got it, Boss Man,” the bartender said, rolling his eyes. “Of course…I’m on cleaning duty.”

“I’ll finish this and get out. How much?”

“Free, man. It’s my leftovers. I ain’t makin’ you pay for that.” 

So Frank finished up his drink and looked around the bar. He’d wasted so much money in gas coming here, at least his drink had been free. After he was finished with the everything-but-the-kitchen-sink drink, Frank set the cup back on the bar and stood up. He told the bartender he was going to use the bathroom and then he would be on his way out. 

“Whatever, man. Just don’t make a mess,” the bartender answered, showing his disgust at having to mop the leftovers from the show up off the floor. 

Frank opened the door to the bathroom with a heavy sigh. The bar had been dim, but the bathroom was full of bright, fluorescent lights making him get a headache almost instantly. He squinted against the light and made his way to the urinal on the back wall to relieve himself. Frank washed his hands in the sink, making sure to keep in mind that he needed to turn off the faucet with a paper towel and not his bare hand. 

After drying his hands, Frank looked at himself one last time in the mirror. Maybe he was a sicko. Maybe this whole thing was just God’s way of telling him, _showing him_ how sick and twisted he was for the things he’d done. It was his own fault his last relationship had gone to shit… For what he’d done, Frank reckoned he was no better than what he’d just witnessed between Father X and Submissive G. An abuse of power.

Frank was about to turn to leave, sick of looking at his own face when he spotted a piece of paper stuck to the stall door behind him. 

“Out of Order,” he expected it to say, but when he turned around he saw that there was a sentence written out with a large, dark speck on the bottom of the page. Frank stepped over to it and saw that the speck was a key taped to the parchment. 

“Then the fifth angel sounded, and I saw a star from heaven which had fallen to the earth; and the key of the bottomless pit was given to him.”

That was all.

“Bible verse?” Frank asked, wracking his Catholic Schoolboy knowledge to remember where those lines had come from. “What the hell?” Frank picked at the tape holding the key to the parchment paper—a key to handcuffs Frank immediately noticed—and then turned the little piece of metal over in his hand. “Oh, fuck!” 

As soon as it clicked together, Frank pulled open the stall door and almost fell backwards at the sight. 

Father X’s blog was full of scripture, twisting sacred words into poetic smut. 

Sure enough, lying on the filthy tile floor, was Submissive G. His wrists were handcuffed over his head to the handicap assistance bar, and his head was lolled to the side. He was completely unconscious. 

“Oh, shit. Shit, shit. _Fuck._ ” Frank looked around, as if expecting the bartender or Father X to be standing behind him. 

G had been left lying there, stripped of clothing, covered it red welts and bloods, sperm and urine. He had a bloody nose and more of the crimson fluid leaked from his lips and the corner of his mouth which was stretched wide to accommodate a red ball gag as if he hadn’t been hurt enough. Even more blood was forming a little puddle of blood between his thighs on the floor. 

“Oh, God…”

Frank sighed and fisting his hands in his hair for a moment, still holding tight to the key. After taking a moment to gather himself, Frank shook off the nerves and moved slowly over to G’s side so he could reach the handcuffs and free the submissive’s hands from the chains. 

As soon as his hands smacked against the ground, G’s eyes shot open and he started to scream, only slightly muffled by the ball in is mouth.

“Sh! It’s okay! It’s okay, I’m here to help! I’m just here to help!”

G screamed harder and then closed his eyes tight, rolling away from Frank and screeching louder when his movements caused the skin on his back to reopen and ooze more blood. 

“It’s okay—Hey, it’s okay. I’m not going to hurt you. I won’t hurt you,” Frank said, hesitating to touch G any more or try to sit him up. As much as he didn’t mind aftercare, he had no experience handling someone who had been beaten so badly. “G? Come on… Let me help.”

G stopped screaming and just sat trembling at an odd angle, trying not to put too much pressure on the bloody patches that used to be the skin of this thighs. 

“Hey… Hey, G? I…I think I’m going to call an ambulance for you? Okay?”

With no regards to the pain it caused him, G turned around to face Frank screaming out “no” over and over around the ball in his mouth. 

“G, you’re hurt. You need help.”

G shook his head and then tried to get on his feet. Frank rose as well and tried to support him, but G pulled away and ended up falling back down after taking one step. Then he started screaming for Father as Frank helped him to sit back up.

“G, he…he _left._ I saw him. He’s gone. Come here—let me get that thing out of your mouth.” G had frozen as soon as Frank told him his dom had left him, and Frank made quick work of the buckle holding the gag in G’s mouth. “G, do you want me to take you somewhere? You need a hospital.”

“No,” G stammered.

“Okay… Well, let me—well, fuck.” Frank sighed and looked G over, wincing and feeling sick to his stomach as he watched the blood congealing with the semen on G’s chin. “Let me get…let me get some towels and help clean you up, okay?” 

G didn’t answer and Frank got up and wadded up some paper towels, wetted them in the sink and then carefully leaned in to wipe at the smears of make up under G’s eyes. The black stains didn’t budge, but the blood and semen came off easily. At first, G flinched with each touch, but then slowly started to incline his head toward Frank’s hand and the paper towels. 

Once his face was clean, Frank threw out the wad of towels and got a new one which he used to wipe at G’s neck, this his chest. He thought to go lower, but couldn’t bring himself to think that just because some psycho had left G chained up in a bathroom stall and he’d found him that he had any right to touch him below the waist. 

“G? I can’t leave you here…”

“Father will come for me,” G stammered swallowing hard and then starting to cry.

Frank sighed and got up, not sure what else he could do. He threw out the wad of paper towels and washed his hands while thanking god and the stars that he didn’t have any open wounds on his hands for diseases to crawl in and infect him after everything he’d touched. 

“I’m gonna… I’ll be right back.” Frank ducked out of the bathroom and stepped back in the bar where the bartender had just finish mopping.

“I was about to come check on you. Thought you fell in,” the bartender said, laughing. Frank went over to him and grabbed him by the arm, just to show how serious it was when he told him:

“That guy, the dom—he left G handcuffed in your bathroom.”

“What?”

“He left him. The guy’s back there, naked, bleeding everywhere—and I don’t know what to do.”

“Shit, are you fuckin’ with me? You’d better be fuckin’ with me.”

“No. He’s still back there.”

“Goddmanit. No clothes?”

“No.”

“Alright, I got some shit in the lost and found. Hang on. Go…make sure he doesn’t fall and crack his head or drown or something. I’ll get the Boss to call that guy and see why the fuck he left his boyfriend here.”

“Thank,” Frank said, going back into the bathroom and going back down to G’s side. G had moved to curl up in a ball against the stall wall, shaking from a mixture of cold and pain and shock. “So…the bartender is gonna get you some clothes…and he’s gonna call your dom.”

G made no indications that he had heard and continued trembling and weeping even when the bartender appeared with his boss who looked at the scene and shook his head.

“Not this again,” the boss said.

“This happened before? With him?” Frank asked. 

“What the fuck does it matter?”

“It matters because he’s a fuckin’ human being, you asshole,” Frank snapped, taking the clothes from the bartender and holding them, unsure how to get them on G when all he could do was shiver and cry.

“Whatever. I’m gonna call Craig and if he doesn’t pick up, you and this guy need to be outta here. Otherwise you’re trespassing. Get him dressed. Get out.”

The owner walked out with the bartender who offered Frank an apologetic gesture before disappearing out the door.

“G? I need you to put on this shirt, okay? It’s gonna hurt, but I think you can take it. Okay?” 

G said nothing and Frank had no choice but to peel him away from the wall and slip the baggy t-shirt over his head. He pulled one arm through, and then the other, but was at a loss for how he would get G into the pair of grey sweatpants that they’d been given.

“G, I need you to stand up. Come on. You’ve gotta get dressed. After that, I promise I won’t make you do anything else. You just gotta get up, okay? I’ll help. Alright? It’s gonna be fine. You’re gonna be fine.”

Despite Frank’s pleas, G resisted when Frank tried to pull him onto his feet by his hand. 

“G, come on. You need to get up. _Now,_ G. I mean it.” 

Even bossing him didn’t work. Frank couldn’t blame him though. His body was bruised and torn. Standing just made it all worse. Frank continued to try until the bartender returned and helped him haul G onto his feet. Outnumbered, G caved and stepped into the sweatpants Frank held open for him while the bartender helped support his weight. 

“The guy won’t answer his phone,” the bartender said.

“Well, what are we supposed to do with him? He can’t _walk._ He doesn’t have shoes.”

“Take him to the hospital. He needs help—and probably a round of antibiotics.”

“Yeah, no shit,” Frank said. The hospital was the easy choice, except every time it was mentioned G groaned and tried to pull away from them. “Shit… Well, I guess he could crash at my place. I’ve got a pull out couch. And I don’t think he’s gonna rob me.”

Frank felt so guilty deciding G’s fate without giving the man any say at all. It was hard though when G wouldn’t speak—couldn’t speak. He was in shock and in pain. Frank felt so bad for him, and he knew that it would only hurt worse in the morning when the burn in his muscles would add to the sting in his skin and the tears in his body. He shouldn’t be alone for that. He shouldn’t be strapped down in a hospital being asked personal questions about how this happened or why he let it transpire. 

“You drive?” The bartender asked.

“Yeah,” Frank said, looking at G and frowning. It was so cruel to just drag him around, but what choice did he have? He couldn’t throw G onto the street. 

“I’ll help him to your car.”

G fought him. He fought him meekly every step of the way, even when he was being pushed into the back seat of Frank’s car. He was scared, but he never spoke any words—not a plea for his dom, not a request to be let free. He was silent except for his weeping and his scream as he laid down across the backseat.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Need proof that I know nothing about hospital etiquette? Just read this chapter! Haha, but seriously don't be too mean. I'm not a medical student; I have an English degree. ^_^;

_Chapter 3_

Frank hurried through the front doors of the ER and asked the woman at the counter if Ray was working. Of course, he was since he was new to the hospital and all rookies got stuck on the night shift. 

The woman asked if Frank needed to be seen by someone, but Frank declined and merely said it was a different kind of emergency and he needed to speak with Ray someplace private. So the nurse took him into an unused office and told him Ray would be by as soon as he was finished registering a patient. It took five minutes before Ray finally came in.

“Hey, what’s the matter? Chelsea said it was an emergency. What’s wrong?” 

“I need your help,” Frank stammered, still trying to catch his breath. He’d left G alone in the car, still whimpering and panting through his excruciating pain as each movement of the car caused his wounds more and more agony. 

“Then you need to get registered and wait your turn. I’m gonna get fired if they find out I’m seeing patients on the side.”

“You’re a nurse. My mom was a nurse—you guys do it all the time.”

“Whatever, just make it quick. What do you want? I’ve got a potential suicide case and I need to be back over there to check her liver enzymes to make sure her organs aren’t shutting down.”

“Look, I was at a club tonight and they beat the shit out of this guy…they _raped_ him, and dumped him there and…”

“Then bring him in here, Frank! I can’t give you anything to help if I can’t assess him.”

“Please, Ray. I just need lots of gauze and those pills you give rape victims.”

“Oh, like that won’t be missed,” Ray said, shaking his head. “Just bring him in.”

“I _can’t._ He can’t walk, Ray. And he screams every time I ask him if he’ll come in. He’s scared and you _know_ you medical people judge us.”

“Judge you? We don’t judge _you,_ Frank. We judge people who get beat to hell every time they want to get a hard on and then come to the ER afterwards because they can’t get the bleeding to stop on their own. We judge people who are too stupid to be safe.”

“Whatever, just _please._ Please, help me out. He’s really messed up, he’s in a lot of pain, I just want to get him home, get him cleaned up and bandaged and make sure he doesn’t catch AIDS from this.”

“Do you even know this guy?”

“No…” Frank said, shaking his head and sighing heavily. 

“Then how do you know he doesn’t already _have_ AIDS? _You_ could get AIDS trying to clean him up outside of a professional, _sanitary_ environment.”

“Then give me some antibiotics and shit too. Please, Ray, just this once. Gauze and pills—not even pain pills. I’ll _pay_ for it—”

“It’s not just some one time pill packet, Frank! They’re prescriptions.”

“Please, Ray. He’s out there in my car, screaming—he’s got blood everywhere, I just want him to go somewhere safe. I want to take care of him. Just help me out. _Please, please_ help me out.”

It took a while longer to convince him, but Ray finally managed to get a sympathetic doctor to sign off on two prescriptions for antibiotics and antiretroviral medications for who she believed were two embarrassed college girls. The gauze, Ray gave to Frank by the roll and sent him out a side door with them and two starter cups of the antibiotics as well as a pain inhibitor for G. 

( ) ( ) ( )

When Frank finally coaxed G into the tub, the pain was so immense that the man couldn’t even scream. He tried—his throat strained with effort—but no sound came out. G began shaking again and within minutes the water turned from clear to blood red. Frank had to drain it, watching the red and pink beads pool at the base of his plastic tub before he refilled it.

Again, the water ran red, but Frank made do with it for the time being. It didn’t matter if the water was clean or red, it was just there to rinse G’s skin. Frank soaked a cloth in the bloody water and dabbed at G’s flesh. He didn’t have to wash away blood alone, he had to scrape off grime and dirt and semen without causing any more pain than necessary. 

Frank drained the tub completely and got a differed rag after he washed G’s hair twice through, using the new cloth to wash G’s face until he was sure he’d gotten rid of every trace those men had left on him. After rinsing his hair of all the suds, Frank refilled the tub a final time and made G turn over onto his stomach in the water so he could wash his back…and thighs. 

Those men had destroyed G’s thighs. Frank was thankful Ray was planning to stop by after his shift because Frank wasn’t entirely convinced that G wouldn’t need stitches, or staples or skin grafts. There was so much blood and what wasn’t red was a shade of purple so dark it was nearly black. 

Touching those wounds even slightly made G’s entire body jerk and he would wail in agony. Frank couldn’t stand doing it no matter how much he told himself he was only trying to help. It didn’t feel like he was helping when G wept brokenly in front of him. 

Father X hadn’t just abused him. Those men hadn’t just hurt him. They left him at another’s mercy—left him defenseless and vulnerable in a state less than human. 

Frank didn’t feel like he was helping when he made G stand up from the tub and started putting antiseptic and antibiotic cream on his wounds. He was a stranger who kept running his hands all over the most intimate parts of G’s body. Even if Frank no longer saw anything sexual about the body before him, it probably didn’t feel that way to G. Every touch probably felt to him like a continuation of the horror he’d been made to endure in the bar. 

After coating his wounds with all the antibiotic cream he had, Frank set to placing the gauze over the bloodied skin. He had to use medical tape to hold the large patches of gauze to his sliced back and to secure it to the curve of his thighs. Frank was able to just wind the gauze around G’s lower thighs where some of the lash marks extended, and also around his knees which had split open from kneeling too long on the floor. He put small band-aids around the other nicks in G’s skin, like the scratches on his forearms and the bites on his shoulders and neck. 

Once he had him bandaged like a body prepared for burial, Frank went into his bedroom and found the largest t-shirt and baggiest sweatpants he could find. He had to help G put the shirt on over his head, and then had to support his weight for him as G tried to stumble into the pants. He almost fell twice, but Frank was there to catch him, inadvertently pushing on sore wounds as he did.

He took G into the bedroom without much thought and surrendered the bed to him, watching as G struggled to find any way to lie without causing himself pain. Frank then brought him the pills and water.

“These will help you. They’ll make it so you don’t get an infection or…catch any diseases. This one will help with the pain.” Frank hadn’t known whether to expect G to take the pills or resist them, but the man struggled back up into a hunched over, half-sitting position and tossed the entire cup worth of pills into his mouth. He swallowed them down with all the water in the glass and then handed the glass back to Frank with a look in his eyes that pleaded for more to drink. Frank refilled the glass three times before G finally laid back down and made as if to sleep, trembling every now and then before starting to sob.

Frank wanted to sit at his bedside and try to offer comfort, but he couldn’t see how a stranger stroking his hair could give G any relief. His body hurt, his trust had been more than betrayed…

He hadn’t deserved this. Of whatever crime Father X thought him guilty, G had surely paid the price tenfold. 

While G rested, Frank got on his computer in the living room and opened Father X’s site to see if the sick son of a bitch had posted anything new.

He had. 

He’d uploaded a video clip from the start of the night when the act had been at least somewhat consensual. Frank didn’t really watch the video — he just stared at G’s face. He kept the volume off in fear G would hear and become more distressed. G had been laughing at the start, kissing the men who came forward to touch him and pouting when he was smacked and spanked before settling into the roleplay — the bad slave who needed punished for breaking rules. 

At the start, he’d wanted it. Frank felt so bad knowing that G’s happiness had turned to _this._

( ) ( ) ( )

Frank slept fitfully on the couch, waking up every hour or two and checking on G every time he did. Two of the times, G had been awake and crying softly, but the other three times he was sleeping—or at least quiet. Frank was thankful he didn’t have work in the morning, but still couldn’t sleep in past nine a.m. 

He got up and checked on G one final time, finding him sound asleep. There was blood all over Frank’s pillow from G’s mouth and nose and Frank sighed at the sight, knowing he was going to have to try coaxing G to go to the Emergency Room. 

While G slept, Frank started making a small breakfast of scrambled egg substitute with some dried herbs and chopped peppers and seasoned tofu bits. He prepared a small bowl for G and looked around for anything he could use as a tray so G wouldn’t have to hold the dish while he ate, not knowing if his wrists were too sore from being restrained. Frank couldn’t find a tray and settled for carrying the bowl and a glass of orange juice into the bedroom. He set the dishes down on the nightstand and hesitated only briefly before gently reaching out and rubbing G’s shoulder.

G’s eyes immediately shot open and he tried to sit up. The fast movements caused his muscles to burn and he let out a loud scream before falling limp against the mattress once again, trembling and whimpering through the pain.

“Hey, sorry to wake you up. I made some breakfast. You should really eat something.”

G only nestled further down into the pillow and blankets, pulling one of the sheets over his eyes in an attempt to block Frank out. 

“Listen, I’m gonna be honest with you… You don’t look so good right now, and I think you should let me take you to the Emergency Room. Okay?”

G said nothing and Frank was made to pull the blanket away from his face to get the man to look at him.

“I know you’re in a lot of pain, but I can’t help you.” 

G stared at him, his eyes tearing up again.

“Do you want a drink? You should have a drink.” Frank grabbed the glass of orange juice and held it out in a way that G could take a drink if he wanted one without having to sit up all the way in order take a sip. After a moment, G even reached out to hold the glass himself as if fearful Frank might try to pull it away from him before he was finished. “Here,” Frank said, offering the bowl of food once the glass was empty. “Eat this while I get you more to drink.”

When he got back, however, G hadn’t touched the food except for to set it back down on the bedside table. 

“Not hungry, huh?” Frank asked, offering the refilled glass of juice. G immediately perked up and finished that glass as well. After giving G a third glass of orange juice, Frank just started eating the bowl of scrambled eggs on his own, not wanting it to go to waste. G stared at him, but merely turned his eyes away whenever Frank would offer him a bite. 

Frank was almost certain G would have taken another glass of juice if he offered, but Frank was nearly out and didn’t want to give it all to G. That and he knew G was using drink as a substitute for food and he was still determined to get the other man to eat at least _something_ before they went to the ER. 

When Frank stood up from the bed there was a quiet knock on his apartment door. He looked over to G who had perked up at the sound and whispered “Craig” under his breath as he tried to sit up in the bed. The pain that the movement caused him left him in tears within a matter of seconds and Frank went to answer the door after giving G one final, pitying glance. He knew it wasn’t Father X coming to the apartment to collect his submissive, it was Ray. 

“He still here?” Ray asked. He was still dressed in his hospital scrubs, leaving Frank to think that his shift had only recently ended.

“Yeah, he’s in the bedroom,” Frank said, stepping back and letting Ray come in.

“You think he’d be okay with it if I tried to check him out? If he needs the hospital and you don’t take him, you could be held accountable,” Ray said.

“He needs the doctor. He can’t even move and his mouth is still bleeding.”

“You didn’t tell me last night he had internal bleeding,” Ray said with a stern tone of voice.

“I don’t know why he’s bleeding, Ray. I’m not a doctor. I asked him if he’d let me take him to the ER and he just gets upset.”

“Probably doesn’t have health insurance,” Ray said, shrugging. 

“Maybe you can help me drag him to my car,” Frank said. “Come on.”

Frank led him into the bedroom and couldn’t help but feel a stab of guilt when he saw how hurt G looked when it was Ray who followed him in and not his dom, not Craig.

“G, this is Ray. He’s a nurse. He’s here to check on you.”

G said nothing, just turned his eyes from Frank to Ray and swallowed hard. 

“Is it okay if I look you over?” Ray asked, flashing his I’m-the-Nice-Nurse smile which he used to set himself apart from all the cranky nightshift nurses at the hospital. The grin did nothing for G who just stared through his tears. “Um… I can see you’ve got some blood on your lips there. Is it okay if I look?” Still, G said nothing, even when Ray came over and gently coaxed him to open his mouth. “Did you get hit in the face?” Ray asked when he started checking out the blood coming from G’s nose. “Not talkin’, huh? Okay.” 

Ray was able to convince G to take off his shirt and unwrapped one of the bandages wound around his back. 

“Oh… Yeah, that’s not good,” Ray said, pulling back a little and looking to Frank. “Did you put _anything_ on these cuts?”

“I had antiseptic and antibiotic cream. Why?” Frank came over to see what Ray was looking at and flinched. One of the lashes on G’s back had turned a dark purple and had dark lines traveling from it, a telltale sign on infection. “I gave him the antibiotics from the hospital.”

“Yeah, but god only knows what got in his cuts when…” Ray stopped talking and shook his head, rewrapping the bandage and patting G on the shoulder. “You need the ER, buddy. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t want to go,” G whispered, trembling and trying to lie back down on the bed. Ray grabbed his arm to stop him and practically pulled him up onto his feet. G couldn’t stand up straight, and hunched over with his arms wrapped tightly over his stomach as though someone had kicked him. 

“You’re going to end up dead if you don’t go,” Ray said. “This is _serious,_ okay? If you don’t have the money for it, that’s okay. The state will cover it. You can’t be turned away because you don’t have money.”

As Frank put on his shoes and jacket, G just stood in the bedroom crying, refusing to put on the socks that were offered to him or replace his shirt or put on a coat. It was as though he thought if he refused to be dressed properly, they wouldn’t make him go—like a small child. 

“I’m not so sure he’s…okay,” Ray said once he and Frank had carefully, painstakingly led him out to Frank car. 

“He’s obviously not okay,” Frank muttered. 

“I mean mentally,” Ray said. “He might…have something wrong with him. Like a condition or—”

“He’s just in pain,” Frank said.

“Frank, he’s not acting like an adult. He acts like he doesn’t understand anything I say and he just keeps staring. I don’t think he might be mentally ill or…maybe even a little bit _challenged,_ you know?”

“He’s in shock,” Frank said, opening the car door and getting in the driver’s side. Ray quickly got into the passenger seat and sent a look into the back where G lay, spread out face-down on the seat. “It’ll be okay, G. I promise. We’re doing this to help you. Okay?”

G let out a pained, frustrated scream in response and kept his hands over his face to block out the sunlight as though it hurt him. He continued to whimper and cry as Frank drove to the Emergency Room, then when they parked in the hospital parking lot, G spoke his first full sentence of that day.

“Father said not to come here. I’m gonna get in trouble,” he said in a shrill, weepy voice. 

“Why do you say that?” Frank asked, turning around in his seat. “G, why do you say that?”

“What do you mean trouble?” Ray asked, his tone more gentle and nurturing than Frank’s. 

G said nothing else, just sobbed into the seat until Ray and Frank pulled him up out of the car. 

“Father will… If you make me go in there, Father will find out. He’ll _punish_ me—please don’t make me go in there.”

“It’s going to be okay,” Frank said, putting an arm around G’s shoulders to support his weight.

“Why do you think your father is going to be mad at you for getting medical help?” Ray asked, helping to support G as well.

“It’s not his father,” Frank mumbled when G didn’t answer. 

“G? Why do you think you’re going to get in trouble for getting looked at by a doctor?” Ray asked, not willing to let it go. He’d always been nurturing and kind, and to see someone in the state that G was in upset him. He wanted to make G feel comfortable and safe, not just pry out all the facts. “Can you tell me?”

“Father told me not to,” G cried, weeping as he was led into the ER reception area. 

“You can’t leave us alone for a minute, can ya, Ray?” The nurse at the desk said.

“Hey, he’s not critical, but he needs a bed,” Ray said quickly. “He needs to lay down.”

“Um, I think we’ve got a bed open. Sure…” The nurse had another worked guide them back to a room where G was allowed to lie down. Frank filled out the paper work they were given and was forced to admit the gross details of why G was there and in such a state. 

“That explains the infection then,” the nurse mumbled to herself as she jotted information down on her clipboard. She told them the doctor would be in soon and that in the meantime they could work to take off the bandages from G’s back and thighs so the doctor could assess them more quickly. 

G laid on his face on the bed, wailing as Frank and Ray undressed him, put him in a hospital gown, and then unwrapped his bandages. The cuts to his thighs were the worst, all of the skin blackened and bleeding, stuck to the bandages in some places and still soaking through the bandages, staining them with red. It was a sickening thing to see, and Frank was fighting tears by the time he and Ray had cut off the final bandage. 

When the doctor came in, she immediately shuddered and ducked her head, not prepared to see such graphic wounds. After taking less than fifteen seconds to gather herself, the doctor approached the bedside and touched G on the shoulder. She asked him if he could tell her his name, but he refused to do more than cry. She asked Frank what he knew about “the patient” and Frank just told her what he could—that he’d found him like this at a bar the night before and that his lover had abandoned him in a bathroom.

G was hooked to an IV even though he attempted to pull away from the needle multiple times, and only after that did his crying and screaming stop in favor of disoriented little moans and whispers as the pain medication worked through his system. G barely did more than groan and twitch as the doctor cleaned, disinfected, and finally cauterized the worst of his wounds. For that last bit, he did scream, but seconds later he behaved as though nothing had happened. 

“Hey, G?” The doctor asked once she had finished her work. “G? Can you tell me your name?”

“Slave,” G whispered, though Frank seemed to be the only one who caught it. 

“Steve? Your name’s Steve?” The doctor asked.

“G, what’s your _name?_ ” Frank pressed. “Can you tell us your name? Your _full_ name.”

“Father won’t want me to say,” G whispered, clutching at the stiff pillow under his head. 

“Your father won’t want you to say?” The doctor asked, looking to Frank with confusion. It was then that Ray pulled her aside and started telling her his theories about G being mentally challenged and unable to answer.

“G, if you don’t tell them your name they’re going to keep you here until they figure it out. And if they can’t…they might send you somewhere. Like a group home...or something. Can you tell me your name?”

“Father won’t want me to say,” G whispered.

“Listen, G. Father turned you over to me. He gave me the key to your handcuffs, so you gotta do what I say. And I want you to tell me your name.”

“Father... I want Father.”

“If you tell me your name we can find him. Please, G. What’s your name?”

“Gerard.”

“Gerard? Good—that’s good. What’s your last name?”

“Way.”

“Way? Gerard _Way?_ ”

“Yes.” G’s eyes slipped closed and he looked to have fallen asleep with the help of the drugs. 

Frank stood up and reported the information to the doctor who left to see if he was in their system or if any of the other hospitals in the area had a record on him.

While she was gone, G slept, trembling with cold even though he’d been re-bandaged and had had a thin blanket draped over him. About forty-five minutes later the doctor reappeared, and Father X was standing beside her.

As if sensing him, G’s eyes snapped open and he immediately tried sitting up in the bed.

“Craig! I didn’t say anyth—”

“Hush.”

Once the command was out, G fell silent and slowly moved to lie back down on the bed—fearful. When Father X saw the way Frank glowered at him, he crossed the room and stood at G’s side, practically shoving Frank out of the way in order to stroke G’s hair and comfort him. 

“My poor boy.”

He started fawning over G as if he weren’t responsible for the condition that he was in, and G eventually crawled up far enough to be able to hug Father X around the shoulders. 

“Why is he in here?” Frank asked Ray. “I told you, that guy is the one who did this to him.”

“It’s his _boyfriend,_ ” Ray said. 

“I don’t care. He’s the one who did this. Why is he in here?”

“There’s no proof.”

“The proof…is on-fucking-line,” Frank muttered, crossing his arms over his chest as he watched G cling to Father X…his “boyfriend.” His abuser. 

Moments later, a man in a casual suit pulled him and Ray aside to talk in the lobby of the hospital. The man was a caseworker rather than a detective and asked Frank everything he knew about G and why he’d been brought in with so many injuries.

Frank didn’t spare a single detail.

It sickened him to see Father X holding and cradling G after what he’d let happen the night before. He should’ve been locked in jail, not be allowed to cuddle his submissive in view of the public. If Frank had his way, Father X would never lay hands on G again.

( ) ( ) ( )

Frank continued waiting in the lobby long after the caseworker had come and gone. He was using Ray as his eyes and ears behind the scenes to figure out what was happening with G and Father X. After the caseworker had taken Frank’s statement, he went to interrogate Father X who had somehow talked himself out of trouble. 

He spun this whole story about G sneaking out the night before to go to a bar with his lover, and how he’d had no idea that this had been going on for so long. Frank didn’t know how, _Ray_ didn’t know how, but Father X managed to fabricate an entire tale about G the unruly partner who often snuck out to drink and misbehave and how he, Father X, was always left at home worrying about him.

Frank’s story became hearsay when he insisted that it had been Father X he’d seen in the bar because the video from the night before never showed Father X’s face and the bar staff as well as G himself denied that Father X had ever been there.

It was sick. That was all Frank could think. It was sick that they were going to let G go home with that man. No matter what Ray said about how the guy was being kind and gentle, Frank knew the truth. He just didn’t understand how they could let G go home with him after this. 

Frank had been waiting in the lobby almost three hours since he’d first been booted from G’s room, and he was waiting for Ray to get done talking with all of his co-workers so they could go home and he could start to forget about everything. If he dwelled on it too long, he would just become angrier and that rage would leave him unable to function. It was bad enough he’d lost his favorite porn site… Now he was going to have to fight the urge to blast that sight and let everyone on there know what a sadistic freak Father X really was.

Frank tipped his head back against the uncomfortable waiting room chair and yawned, growing more and more impatient by the second. Ray had just finished a shift, why did he want to hang around talking with his co-workers? He sighed loudly and lolled his head to the side to look at the clock on the wall across the way just in time to see G step cautiously out into the waiting room dressed in a baggy sweatshirt and jeans with a coat folded over his arms in front of him. Frank stared for a moment, but then sat up straight when Father X never appeared at G’s side. 

G kept looking around anxiously, and then crept over to the glass doors leading out of the Emergency Room. He seemed to be looking for something and when he couldn’t spot it he nervously approached the nurse at the reception desk. Frank couldn’t hear what she said, but she kept shaking her head negatively and shrugged every now and then until G gave up and backed away, still clutching at his coat. He looked out the doors again, but didn’t move to go outside.

Even when Frank stood up and approached him, G kept his eyes on the parking lot.

“Hey,” Frank said, touching G’s shoulder. Even once contact was made, G didn’t look at him. “Is everything okay? Should you be up walking around?”

“Father’s coming for me… Father said—he said he was going to come.”

“Wasn’t he back in the room with you?” Frank asked.

“He said he was going to bring the car around… Father told me to wait for him here, but…”

Frank sighed heavily and turned away from G in order to approach the nurse at the reception desk.

“Can you get Ray up here? We need to leave,” he said. The nurse looked at him a little coldly and then paged Ray over the intercom. It was far more drastic than what was necessary to summon an off-duty nurse, but Frank felt the woman at the counter did it out of spite. When Ray arrived in the lobby, even he looked angry.

“What’s the matter?” Ray asked, then added after noticing G by the doors, “What is he still doing here? He was cleared to leave an hour ago.”

“An hour ago?” Frank asked, quirking his brow in annoyance. Ray had been wandering around bullshitting with his friends for over an _hour?_

“Yeah… Hang on.” Ray went over to the receptionist and asked her if Father X a.k.a Craig had already left. The nurse looked over the log book in front of her and then nodded quickly, saying he’d picked up the prescription orders and left about twenty minutes ago. “You were sitting out here, didn’t you notice him go?” Ray asked Frank, looking disappointed.

“No. I was staring at the clock waiting for you to get done gossiping like a school girl,” Frank muttered. “Now what are we gonna do? The guy ditched him. _Again._ ”

“We don’t know that,” Ray said, though his expression was already becoming troubled. “Maybe…maybe he went to go fill the prescriptions or something?”

“And left his ‘boyfriend’ here alone? He ditched him!”

Frank went back over to G and touched his shoulder again while Ray coaxed the nurse behind the counter to see if Father X had left any contact information through which he could be reached. 

“Hey… Did he tell you where he was going?”

“To get the car,” G whispered, looking out the windows instead of at Frank. “He said…wait for him to get the car.”

“The guys not answering his phone,” Ray said after several minutes. “What do you wanna do?”

“I can’t _leave_ him here,” Frank said, fuming as he stared out the doors with G. 

“Frank, you can’t just take him either,” Ray whispered. 

“What am I supposed to do? He’s hurt, the only reason he’s walking around is because he’s doped up—”

“And say you do take him. His meds are gonna wear off and that guy took the prescription orders.”

“We can’t leave him here, Ray. That guy is a psychopath. He _tortures_ G. He did this just to torment him. Maybe he _will_ come back for G, but probably not until midnight or something. I’m not leaving him here. I’m taking him home.”

“Fine. Just let me leave your info with Rene so if he does come back, he knows where he can find his boyfriend.”

Frank gave his phone number only to the receptionist and then tried to put on his kindest smile for G even though underneath it all he was still raging. 

“Hey… So, _Craig_ went to fill your prescriptions. If you want to, you can wait for him back at my place—you know? So you can lie down and get some rest. _Eat some food?_ ” 

G stared at Frank, but showed no signs of comprehension. 

“Or you can wait here, but…they’re not gonna let you lay down on the floor. So, what do you say? Huh?”

G stared at Frank in the eyes, empty and emotionless until all at once he burst into tears and dropped his jacket on the floor. Frank looked back at Ray long enough to send him an irritable, matter-of-fact glare and then opened his arms to offer G a hug. It surprised him when the other man fell against him, sobbing into his shoulder while the nurse at the reception desk just watched.


	4. Chapter 4

_Chapter 4_

Frank didn’t want to admit that he regretted his decision, but after four straight hours of hearing nothing but screaming and crying from his bedroom, Frank could hardly keep from getting frustrated. He felt bad for G, but at the same time he wanted to throw open the bedroom door and tell him to shut the fuck up already. Frank understood the man was in pain and upset about being left behind _again,_ but he was giving Frank a headache. 

Whenever he thought the crying was over, it would start up again and just get louder and louder and louder. 

Finally, Frank gave up on “giving G his space” as Ray had suggested he do and knocked sharply on the door.

“Hey, G? I’m coming in.” 

G didn’t seem to notice him. He was lying face down on the mattress, burying his face in Frank’s pillow and filling it with tears and spit and snot as he screamed, screamed, _screamed._

“Hey!” As soon as he shouted, the screams immediately turned to choked whimpers. G’s body started trembling and Frank felt a small bit of guilt dig at him. It wasn’t G’s fault he was shrieking in pain…and after being stared at by those huge, empty eyes for the entire drive back to his house, Frank started to feel there might’ve been some credibility to Ray’s theory that G had some kind of mental handicap. 

The thought disgusted him… How someone could treat _anyone_ the way Father X had allowed G to be treated was unfathomable, but to exact that same cruelty against someone mentally ill or mentally challenged? Unforgivable. It was just _unforgivable._

“You…you need to keep it down a little, alright?” Frank said, going to G’s bedside in order to try getting another look at him. As always, G merely stared at him and kept whimpering through his pain. Father X had stolen his prescription orders and Frank had nothing at all to give him to help with the pain of his lacerated flesh. “I know it hurts. I know you’re sad right now, but I’m starting to think my neighbors are gonna call the cops and…honestly, I’m getting a headache. Okay?”

G stared and stared…

“Okay?” Frank asked again, quirking up an eyebrow and staring back until G blinked and looked away. 

“Okay,” G whispered.

“Can I get you something? Do you want some water?”

Again, G looked him silently in the eyes.

“G, you need to talk to me. I can’t help you if you won’t talk to me.”

“Father doesn’t want me to talk to you,” G said, looking away toward the bedroom door as if he expected Father X to appear there.

“Why not?” Frank asked. Of course, G didn’t answer. “G, why doesn’t Craig want you to talk to me?”

“I’m not supposed to,” G whispered. He sounded like a little child caught in a lie, as though Frank had caught him stealing candy before dinner and asked him why he was in trouble.

“Listen, he’s not here. I’m not friends with Craig. You can say _anything_ you want to me and he will _never,_ _ever_ know about it. Okay?”

G was silent, staring off into space until the words seemed to click with him and he looked Frank in the eyes again. 

“You won’t tell Father?”

“No… I’m not gonna say anything to him. I don’t like him, personally. I think he’s an asshole, so tell me anything you want. He’s not gonna know.”

“I’m really thirsty,” G whispered, blinking back more tears.

“So I’ll get you a drink,” Frank said, tossing up his arms and leaving to get G a drink. He even got a pitcher out of his cupboard and filled it with water, knowing that G would want to keep drinking after his first glass. 

So after an entire pitcher of water, G was finally able to stop crying and even moved to sit up a little, propping himself against the headboard with his shoulder so his back and thighs didn’t have to touch the bed. 

“Can I ask you…something kind of personal?” Frank asked, leaning against the wall at the side of the bed. G, as always, just stared. “Look, um… You’re not—I don’t want you to take this the wrong way…” Frank kept trying to self-censor, but when G’s staring started getting under his skin, Frank decided offending him may not be preferable, but at least it would get a look to cross his face. “You’re not acting normal, you know? You stare a lot and you don’t say very much. I’m wondering if…you have a disability or—or an _illness_ I should know about so I don’t offend you.”

G stared in silence, not even blinking. If he was offended, he did a hell of a job covering it. 

“You need to answer me. Is there something…wrong with you? Mentally?” Wrong wasn’t the right word, but Frank thought throwing out something derogatory would get G’s attention. 

“Father says that—”

“I don’t care what _he_ says. I care about what _doctors_ say. Have doctors ever told you you have a disability? Are you mentally handicapped?”

“No,” G said, his eyes narrowing—finally showing the irritation he’d been hiding.

“Are you sure? Because—”

“Yes, I’m sure! There’s nothing _wrong_ with me.”

“Okay. I just had to ask, you know?”

“I’m not crazy or retarded—”

“Hey,” Frank said, giving him a warning look. “Don’t use that word.”

“Fuck you,” G snapped. “I’m not fucked up. I’m in pain.”

 _And now we know why,_ Frank thought, rolling his eyes when G finally started to show some of his true colors. 

( ) ( ) ( )

After his short conversation with G, Frank went back out into his living room and started up his laptop, making sure that the sound was off before going to Father X’s website. As soon as the page loaded, Frank groaned in disgust. 

The man was still posting as if G were with him. He’d uploaded more photos from later in the session that night in the bar, including snapshots of G’s back and thighs where the marks had turned a dark purple from the beating. There was even a supposed message from G thanking everyone who helped Father punish him, explaining that he’d learned his lesson and that it would be a while before he could star in a new video because of his healing wounds. 

Without much thought, Frank commented on the post calling out Father X for his lies and asking him if it had always been his intention to put his submissive in the hospital and then leave him there. Seconds later, his post disappeared. 

Father X was live—and covering his tracks.

Not long after that, a private message appeared on Frank’s account sent from none other than the Father himself.

“Thank you, friend,” the message began, “for being so kind as to watch over my little lamb while I am out of town on business. I have filled his prescriptions and left them all on the kitchen counter in our home.” 

Frank felt his skin turn cold as read the address Father X typed into the message. This had to be some kind of trap. Father X was laying a trap for him and Frank had a feeling that if he went anywhere near that house, he wouldn’t come out alive. 

As if predicting his aversions, Father X wrote a paragraph detailing where the key was hidden and how Frank could feel free to bring as many people to accompany him to the house as he’d like—no one would be there to cause him any harm. Frank, he said, was free to collect Submissive G’s things and take them to his home or move into the house temporarily until Father X returned. 

However, though he expressed Frank was free to use anything in the home he needed—any appliance, any device—Father X kept inventory of all his things and Frank would be “legally reprimanded” for anything that turns up missing without an explanation. 

“What the fuck,” Frank whispered, wishing he could call Ray and tell him the latest development. Ray, however, would be sleeping after his nightshift at work and by the time he’d be awake to hear, he would be back on his way into work. 

Frank set his computer aside and went back into his bedroom without knocking.

“G?”

“What?” G asked, sniffing through a fresh wave of tears.

“What’s your home address?”

“Why?”

“Just tell me,” Frank said, sighing and rolling his eyes. G had no right to act so stubborn after all the work Frank had gone through just to protect him and get him the care he needed after his dom abandoned him. 

Whimpering a little, G told Frank the same address that Father X had included in his message. 

Frank thanked him and went back out to his living room, leaving the door open a crack. He went back to his laptop and jotted down the address on a piece of notebook paper. He composed a reply to Father X, not sparing any insults as he asked Father why he thought it would be okay to leave his submissive chained up in a bathroom stall. Didn’t he realize any twisted fuck could’ve taken him, raped him again, and then murdered him? 

Father X’s only response was to reiterate what he had written on the note on the stall door: “He who holds the key is the possessor of the bottomless pit.”

Frank asked him what the fuck that even meant and then closed the window. He set to looking up directions to the address and looking at the home on Google maps. The place wasn’t massive, but it was still a large house with a huge yard surrounding it, protecting it from the nearby homes. It was set apart, but not secluded. Frank felt that if he did walk into some kind of a trap, the neighbors would notice something suspicious going on and call the police.

( ) ( ) ( )

As he’d been told, the prescriptions were all sitting in a row on the kitchen counter of Father X’s house. It was such an odd house. Everything was kept just so, nothing out of place. No clutter, no junk mail lying around, no knickknacks. It was almost like a model house not meant to be lived in, but there were photos—there were photos _everywhere_ of G and Father X—Gerard and Craig. Professional portraits of them standing side by side, pictures of them holding hands, kissing, cuddling, out on dates… It all just seemed so _normal._

Frank had told himself going in that he wasn’t going to get caught up in Father X’s web. That he was going to come in, grab the prescriptions and leave. But all those photos kept taunting him. They showed a happy couple despite the massive age gap between the two. 

As Frank ascended the stairs, things started to lose their normalcy. The pictures lining the staircase were of G much younger—much _too_ young—kissing Father X on the mouth. Then, right at the top of the stairs, looming over it, was a massive black and white print of G naked and bound—crying in pain—with Father X standing dressed in a priest’s clothes behind him with a cane in one hand a bible in the other. There was a small placard stuck on the wall beside it as if this were some sort of art piece in a gallery, but instead of listing a photographer the placard read: Spare the Rod, Spoil the Child.

Guests who came to visit Gerard and Craig were obviously not welcomed upstairs where one bend in the staircase led to Submissive G and Father X’s lair. The portrait though…it made Frank sick to his stomach. What must it be like for G to live in a house where his pain was on display as if celebrated, forced in his face every time he went upstairs for anything? 

The first room Frank entered was an average bedroom, made up just as perfect as the space downstairs. The pictures, also, had returned to normal with a portrait of Gerard kissing Craig on the cheek hanging over their shared bed. The house had no artwork in it at all. No signs that the two inhabitants enjoyed anything but each other.

Frank went over to the closet, still grappling with the decision of whether or not he would just bring G here and drop him off or if he would bring clothes and things G would need and keep him at his apartment. There was no reason for him to act as a babysitter but…G was in so much pain. He could barely walk. How was he expected to take care of himself?

So Frank, rolling his eyes at his own generosity, opened the closet and dug through the mixed articles of clothing until he found some he was positive belonged to G. He put together a couple of outfits after digging through the dresser drawers as well and then stepped back into the hallway. There were two other doors at the top of the stairs—one leading into a bathroom and the other, Frank assumed, led to Father X’s sex dungeon. 

He tried to fight the curiosity, but it ate away at him until he turned the knob and pushed the door open. Instead of being met with a display of whips and toys, Frank stared at walls plastered in sketches and paintings—all the artwork missing from the other walls of the house seemed to be shoved in the tiny space. There was a desk pressed against the wall with a lamp, the entire surface covered in papers and art supplies—pencils, pens, markers, paints…

Frank peered around at all of the artworks. There were sketches of angels, sketches of monsters and vampires, drawings of horses with bones showing through, and paintings of landscapes with fire in the background. It was so tortured… Frank could feel the angst radiating off of it. 

Just as he was about to leave, something caught his eye. There were two corers of paper taped to the window, as though something had been placed there and then ripped away. Frank glanced into the wastebasket beside the desk and saw only one crumpled piece of paper lying inside. He took it out and unfolded it, the nausea hitting him almost instantly. Two corners were missing from the page which lined up perfectly with those still taped to the window. 

“Help Me,” it read. Written in thick, red letters.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is a little short, but the next part I have planned is too long to include in this one--so the next update will be longer!

_Chapter 5_

Frank was still trying to shake the images from his mind of the awful, awful things he’d seen when he’d snuck down into Father X’s basement. He knew he would see things that would upset him, he knew to expect BDSM gear and whips, but he hadn’t expected to see all of _that._

There were photos pinned in a collage on one of the basement’s largest walls—a wall that never showed in the videos. They were photos of G bleeding, snapshots of his face contorted with unimaginable pain. It wasn’t erotic, it was sickening. 

Whatever was going on between G and X was not master and submissive—BDSM and sex. It was violent, it was obsessive and possessive and sick. It was wrong. It was so, so wrong and Frank felt so fucking bad for G. 

As he stared at that disgusting collage of photos, all the could think about was the video he’d seen on Father X’s site: Baby Virgin’s First Time. G could never have known then that _this_ would be what became of him. He thought of how shy and _innocent_ G had been. How trusting he was of Father X—of _Craig_ —even to the extent of letting him film their first time (his _very_ first time). Frank had started crying when he saw a photo of G lying strapped to a table, his face the very epitome of sorrow as he watched a syringe come toward his face. What was in the vial? Frank didn’t want to know. Nothing harmless…

Frank had seen hardcore shows that had turned his stomach, where the lines between fantasy and reality got too blurred for his tastes, but this…this was just a nightmare. A living nightmare. And all G could do to help himself was write “Help Me” on a piece of paper and tape it to his upstairs window hoping someone might walk by and take it seriously.

So when Frank got home, he made sure that his knock on the bedroom door was gentle. He made sure that when G said it was okay to come in that he came in slowly, afraid that if he moved too fast he might somehow scare him. G had given him attitude before he’d left, but Frank didn’t want to hold it against him now. It felt cruel to show him any sort of coldness. 

“Hey, G, I wanna… I wanna ask you about something, okay?” Frank asked, sitting down at the foot of the bed.

“You’re scaring me,” G said, looking at Frank cautiously and crawling forward a little bit on the bed. “Did you get my meds?”

“Yeah—I…I got you some clothes too.”

“Can I have a pain pill? Then you can ask me whatever you want. I just hurt right now and if you ask me something, I don’t think I’m going to give you a very nice answer when I hurt this much.”

“Right,” Frank said, sighing and composing himself a little more before standing back up and going out to his kitchen to form a cocktail of pain pills and antibiotics for G as well as the rest of the orange juice from that morning to help him wash the tablets down. 

Once G had swallowed the pills, he nestled back down in the sheets and pillows, looking as though he intended to form a cocoon, and then met Frank’s gaze, inviting him to ask his questions. 

“So…when I was in your house—”

“Father’s house,” G corrected, barely more than a mumbled through all the blankets.

“Well, when I was in the house I saw that you’d…written a note and tried to tape it to the window. Do you wanna…tell me about that?”

“No.”

“No?”

“I don’t want to think about it.”

“Why did you write it?” Frank pressed, keeping his tone gentle. It was his hope that he could get G to realize how badly he was being treated and maybe, before Father X returned, they could work together on a plan to get G out while he had the chance.

“Because he whipped me,” G whispered, his eyes starting to tear up. “And made it so I can’t get it up anymore,” he added before a sob broke out.

“What do you mean?” Frank asked, thinking of the video invitation Father X had posted for the night at the Jailer’s Den. He’d commented about G not being able to stay hard for him.

“He whipped me…down there. Now I can’t… And it makes him so mad.” G’s words were disrupted by so much sobbing that they were barely audible and Frank felt his heart break for the other man. 

“Did he take you to a doctor?” Frank asked. 

“No. Father doesn’t… Craig doesn’t like me to go to the doctor. He says they ask too many questions.”

_Of course they do,_ Frank thought. _Look at what he’s reduced you to. Of course they’re going to start asking questions._

“G, how did—”

“My name is Gerard. You’re not with Craig. You don’t get to call me that.”

“Okay. I’m sorry,” Frank said, shifting his weight at little on the bed. “Can you tell me how you met him? You seem like…a nice guy. How’d you get mixed up with a twisted freak like him.”

“Father’s not twisted,” Gerard snapped, locking eyes with Frank and glaring even through his tears. “He _loves_ me. He hurts me, but he _loves_ me more than you could ever know.”

“Gerard, he _beat_ you. He _injected_ you with shit in that house. He _left_ you—”

“He doesn’t—”

“Twice! He left you twice… Gerard, he doesn’t _love_ you.”

“You can’t say that!” Gerard yelled, sitting up and then immediately screaming in pain and falling back down against the mattress from the pain of his wounds. “Craig is the _only_ person who loves me. He’s been there for me my _whole_ life. My _whole life._ ”

“Gerard, he _abuses_ you. I know the scene, alright? I know how it’s _supposed_ to look. And what _Craig_ is doing to you is not part of a scene. He’s _torturing_ you and you know it.”

“But he’s the only person I have!” Gerard cried, covering his face with his hands. “He’s all I have.”

“Where’s your family?”

“I don’t know!”

“Did he take you from them?” Frank asked, starting to feel even worse.

“No! I left _them!_ They didn’t understand me—they didn’t understand…Craig.”

“Where in the world did you meet this guy?” Frank asked, shaking his head and letting out a heavy sigh. 

“He was my priest.”

“Your _priest!?_ Are you fucking kidding me?”

“You don’t _know_ him!”

“You’re deluded, Gerard. You wrote that letter—you hung it up. You _wanted_ someone to come find you so why are you fighting with me now?”

“Because I don’t have anywhere else to go. He’s my boyfriend, he’s my _caretaker._ He’s all I have.”

“He’s your abuser. He’s the reason you can’t even move right now. He’s the reason you’re in my apartment! He _left_ you, _handcuffed_ in a bathroom stall. Do you know what kind of sick motherfucker could’ve found you?”

Gerard didn’t answer. He laid in the bed sobbing as the words stabbed him in the chest. 

“Gerard, you need get away from him and now’s the time. He’s out of town for a month or something… We’ll get you better, then—”

“No! I want to go home… Just take me to Father’s house and—”

“And let him leave you to get killed again. No. That’s not happening.”

“I don’t belong to you,” Gerard muttered before moaning either from nausea from the medication or exhaustion.

“I know that, but I don’t feel right letting you go back to that house. He _damaged_ you. Don’t you want to be with someone who can treat you better?”

“What? Like you? A midget freak obsessed with online porn just like all the other assholes in the bar that night. No thanks, I’ll keep my priest. At least he can afford a house and not this…matchbox apartment.”

“Yeah, you sound real convincing when you’re crying,” Frank said, his anger breaking through his pity just a little. 

( ) ( ) ( )

Gerard laid in the bed, shaking hard and twitching as bolts of pain shot through his back and down his legs. It was dark and the apartment had long since gone quiet. 

Gerard hated the dark. He hated the quiet. He hated that he needed another pain pill and Frank had never come back to give him one. Maybe yelling at his host when he was practically bedridden wasn’t such a good idea. 

He just made Gerard so angry. He didn’t understand Craig. Yes, Craig as mean. Yes, Craig was cruel. Yes, Gerard _wanted_ out, but there was nowhere for him to go. He had no work history, no credit, no family worth talking to… What was he supposed to do? Go stay in a homeless shelter and be taught how to eat from dumpsters and not die? 

No. Gerard was too proud to end up like that. Craig had money. Craig had power and influence and everything Gerard needed to stay alive without having to work for it. The only payment he had to offer in return was his blood and his flesh. It was a small price, Gerard felt, for the life of luxury to which he’d become accustomed. 

But Frank had a point. Father’s games had started to go too far. Father had let others have him before—let others whip him and spank him and tease him. Sure, and for the most part Gerard loved it. He _loved_ that attention. He wanted all eyes to be on him, all hands on him. He liked the pain-pleasure. He liked the feel of a heavy whip falling on his back. But it had broken his heart when Father had dragged him into that bathroom and cuffed him to that handle. He’d pleaded for him to change his mind, but Father just kept saying “You don’t want me. Maybe you’ll be happier with someone else.” And when Gerard swore up and down that he lack of arousal had nothing to do with his feelings for Father, he’d been gagged and slapped. After that it all turned dark. 

Then Frank had been on him and… Gerard just didn’t like to think about what came after that—or what came after _this._

The pain in his back and thighs started pulsating even faster, Gerard relied on infantile instincts and started moaning and then screeching until Frank finally came back for him, needing no prompting in bringing Gerard his pill.

After Gerard finished his glass of water, he handed it back to Frank who turned to walk away. Gerard didn’t know what made him do it more—the fear of being left alone or the habit of sleeping near another warm body—but he seized Frank’s hand before he could go and held it. 

“What?” Frank asked. “I’m tired, Gerard. I need to go back to sleep. I’ve got work in the morning.”

“Sleep here,” Gerard said, squeezing Frank’s hand a little more. When the other man didn’t move to get in the bed, Gerard used the pain still rocketing through his body to summon tears merely for the sake of sniffing them back. “Please stay,” he whimpered. “I don’t want to be alone.”

It worked on Craig, so it would definitely work on Frank. Which it did.

No sooner had Gerard forced one tear to fall than Frank crawled into bed beside him.


	6. Chapter 6

_Chapter 6_

The whole time Frank was at work he kept thinking about Gerard and his apartment. He knew Gerard was in pain and incapacitated, but he still had a terrible fear that the stranger would steal all of his valuable things and disappear with them. What if Father X—what if _Craig_ —had actually lured Frank to his house for the sake of following Frank home? Then while Frank was gone, he and Gerard could make off with all of Frank’s things. 

It got to the point where Frank could think of nothing else, and the whole time he worked he had an expression of rage fixed on his face because he _knew_ that when he got home, there would be nothing left of his apartment. His money would be gone, his tv, his record collection, his _guitars._ He began getting angrier at himself, too, for letting himself get into this situation at all.

Why did he _have_ to go to the live show? Why did he let himself get drawn into this stupid game? Why not just call the cops and let them clean up Craig’s mess? Because he’d been embarrassed about being there? Because some mentally _deranged_ bdsm slave begged him not to take him to the ER? 

How could Frank let himself be so naïve? The world was full of sick people and he’d just opened up his life to two of them—at _least._ He was lucky if he even got out of this alive. Hell, it would be good fortune if being robbed blind was all that happened to him.

So, when Frank got home and unlocked his apartment door, he had already steeled himself for what he _knew_ was waiting behind the doors. A ransacked apartment. Everything gone except for the furniture that was too large to steal.

He was _ready_ for it.

But when he opened the door, everything was as it should be except Gerard. Instead of lying in bed, he was standing in the kitchen looming over the oven where something was on fucking fire. It was a small fire, but it was still an open flame and even though Gerard was trying (maybe) to put it out, he didn’t seem at all bothered by it. He wasn’t frantic, he wasn’t cursing to himself as he looked for water or something to snuff the flames. He just stood there in front of it hardly moving at all.

Like he was _trying_ to burn the whole fucking place down.

“What the fuck!?” Frank snapped, slamming his door and hurrying over to the oven. When he reached Gerard’s side, the other man readily stepped away from him—as though repelled by magnets preventing him and Frank from touching. “What the hell are you trying to do?” Frank asked. 

Gerard had apparently been trying to cook something and burned it, but instead of removing it from the heat he just left the mess of _whatever it had been_ burning in the pan until it caught fire. 

Frank got the lid to the pan from the cupboard and quickly dropped it on overtop the blaze, hissing when the flames lapped at his skin for a moment. Once the pan was covered, Frank grabbed a folded up dish towel and used to move the pan away from the oven and placed it into the sink. After several seconds, he turned on the water and stepped back when the hot pan turned the drops of water which hit it into a raging steam before everything cooled down.

“Wanna tell me what that was?” Frank asked, turning to Gerard was standing on the opposite side of the room by the apartment door. He looked like a little kid who had gotten in trouble, his head ducked down to hide his eyes. “I told you this morning that I would make us dinner.”

Gerard mumbled something that Frank didn’t catch, but finally lifted his gaze. He looked sad, not close to tears or terrorized, but visibly unhappy. 

“From now on just…just don’t touch my oven,” Frank said, turning off the burner and making sure nothing else on the stove was lit or running. He surveyed his kitchen again quickly, searching for anything else that might ruin his home, but all he noticed was that the dishes were done there was no evidence that Gerard had ever even been trying to make food. 

Frank went back over to the sink and lifted the lid on the pan. The fire was out, leaving nothing but small black flecks in its wake. It wasn’t burnt food…it was paper. 

“What the hell did you—” Frank turned around to confront him but Gerard was no longer standing by the door. “Gerard?”

Out of the corner of his eye he noticed his bedroom door closing and felt a mixture of panic and curiosity hit him. There was no telling from the ashes what Gerard had been trying to destroy—whether it was something of his or something belonging to Frank—and having the other man running away and hiding from him made Frank that much more wary that it was something of his that had been destroyed.

But to what end? What could he have that Gerard wanted to ruin? And why burn? Why not just throw it in the trash or flush it down the toilet?

“Gerard,” Frank said, going to the door and pausing just long enough to roll his eyes and knock before opening the door and stepping inside. 

Gerard was lying face down in the bed again as if pretending he hadn’t moved even though Frank had obviously _seen him_ in the kitchen. 

“I need you to just be honest with me. What were you—”

“It was a sketch. You weren’t supposed to be home yet.”

“A sketch?”

“Yeah.”

“So why were you _burning_ it?” Frank asked, not believing him for a minute. “Why not just throw it away?”

“Didn’t want you to see it,” Gerard said, voice muffled by the pillow.

“I’m not gonna go digging around in the trash. You almost caught the building on fire.”

“No I didn’t,” Gerard said.

“Yeah you fuckin’ did. Don’t _burn_ things in my apartment.”

“Fine,” Gerard mumbled. 

Frank rolled his eyes and let out a frustrated sigh. He wanted to change into his day clothes but didn’t feel like taking his clothes into the bathroom or changing in front of Gerard—and he doubted it would go over well if he told Gerard to get up and leave the room so he could change. 

“I mean it,” Frank said as he went to back out of the room. “Don’t burn any more shit in my apartment.”

“Fine,” Gerard repeated, sounding tearful even though Frank didn’t think he had a right. He hadn’t _yelled_ at Gerard even though he had all the right to. He’d been stern, but that shouldn’t matter. 

Frank figured the tears had as much legitimacy as the one’s he’d used the night before to get Frank to sleep next to him. Frank had thought he would be smothered with his pillow all night. He could hardly sleep at all. It didn’t help, either, that Gerard smelled like blood even with all of his wounds bandaged. 

After leaving the bedroom, Frank went to go watch TV while he thought of what to do for dinner. He could make something but he didn’t really feel like going near his oven at the moment. The thought of it made him angrier and angrier as he wondered what Gerard had _actually_ been burning. 

But when he sat on the couch he heard something under the cushion and crack and when he stood up to see, he pulled a notebook out from under the seat. It was _his_ notebook and he knew for a fact that it had been put in the junk drawer in his kitchen cabinets, not under his couch cushion.

He glanced at the closed bedroom door and then sat back down after replacing the cushion. He opened the notebook and flipped through the first few pages which held his old notes—some scribbled song lyrics he was angry Gerard had seen, some financial planning he’d needed when trying to work out a monthly budget—and then got to the pages Gerard used. 

There were sketches, very rough sketches of deformed monsters and mythical animals, but also a few pages with writing. Three pages had ‘help me’ written in all caps over and over, crammed onto the little lines—front and back. 

Three pages, front and back… Yet those weren’t the pages he supposedly decided to burn. No. After those pages there were two more sketches, one of a little vampire and one of a nearly pornographic woman being stabbed though the chest. 

Frank looked from the gory drawing—much more detailed and proportionately accurate than the first few sketches—to his bedroom door. Tortured or not, Gerard was fucking psychotic. He was away from Craig, but it was obvious by his three pages of HELPMEHELPMEHELPME that he was still feeling trapped, and he was _angry._ His sketches all had something either dark, twisted, or violent about them and it made Frank nervous about what had been on the pages Gerard chose to burn. 

There was fringe left between the pages after the sketch of the impaled nude woman and what appeared to be some kind of poem. Gerard _had_ ripped something out, but whether or not that was what he actually burned was still up in the air. 

On closer inspection, Frank saw that what he’d thought was a poem was actually a set of psalms. And the next four pages all had scripture written on them front and back. 

Gerard went from doodling monsters to pleading for help, to drawing out an impeccable image of a brutally murdered woman to writing _scripture_ from memory in the notebook. What the hell was wrong with this guy?

Frank didn’t even _want_ to know what had been on those other pages Gerard opted to burn to keep hidden. If they were anything like the figure of the woman, Frank was just glad he didn’t have to see them. 

When he heard movement in the bedroom, Frank quickly shut the notebook and slipped it back under the cushion. Whatever reason Gerard had for making those awkward, awful things, Frank didn’t want to hear it. By the time Gerard limped back into the living room, Frank was already back in his seat pretending he didn’t know anything about the notebook hidden underneath him. 

“Can I take another pain pill?” Gerard asked, coming to stand in front of Frank.

“Yeah, I don’t care,” Frank said, shaking his head. The question confused him at first, but when Gerard hurried over to the prescription bottles on the kitchen counter he realized Gerard wasn’t used to doing much of anything without permission. Or maybe he’d already taken half the bottle and wanted Frank’s opinion on whether or not it was safe to take a few more. “How many of those have you had today?” Frank asked. 

That morning, Gerard had taken one of the pain pills as well as the antibiotics and antiretrovirals he’d been prescribed. Frank really hoped Gerard didn’t take all of the medication at once. There was no way Frank could buy him more and he didn’t want to see what would happen if he found out his new roommate was a pill junkie. 

“I had the one this morning,” Gerard mumbled, getting a cup of water to help wash down the pill. 

“That’s it?” Frank asked.

“Yeah. Still hurts a lot.”

“You could’ve had another one around noon. They’re not long lasting pills,” Frank said.

“I know,” Gerard said, pausing as he took his pill. “But I don’t want to run out.”

“You have forty pills. You’re not going to run out unless you start eating them like candy,” Frank said, turning around on his couch to watch as Gerard started washing the glass he’d gotten out and then set to cleaning the pan in the sink. “How does pizza sound for dinner?”

“Can we get mushrooms on it?” 

“Yeah. I don’t care,” Frank said. When Gerard turned away from the sink, finished cleaning the pan, he was actually smiling. The promise of food—or maybe it was because he’d gotten a say in their meal—making him glow the way a person who got his rocks off drawing mutilated women had no right to.

As they waited for the pizza after Frank called to order it, Gerard kept pacing back and forth in the kitchen as if lost. Every once in a while he would hurry into the bedroom as if being chased by something, then moments later would come back out and pace the kitchen some more. Frank didn’t know if the behavior was his way of working through the pain his body was in or if the drugs were giving him hallucinations, but it was unsettling either way.

Frank understood that Gerard couldn’t just _sit down_ given the state he was in, but the constant movement had to be causing him just as much pain. 

“Would you just lie down somewhere?” Frank snapped after tiring of hearing his houseguest pacing back and forth. 

“I can’t,” Gerard said, his tone the same as a child complaining about homework. 

“Why?” Frank asked.

“When I lay down I feel like I’m gonna throw up.”

“Oh. Is that from the medication?” Frank turned around in the couch again to watch Gerard as he paced back and forth in front of the kitchen sink.

 

“I don’t know—yeah, I guess,” Gerard stammered.

“Are you sure you’re okay? You seem kind of…nervous.” It was a stupid question and Frank knew it. Was Gerard nervous? Of course he was fucking nervous. He had no idea where he was or where his partner was, he was in pain and (for all intents and purposes) at the disposal of a complete stranger.

“I’m… I don’t know.” Gerard came away from the kitchen in order to stand beside the couch. Frank leaned away from him.

“What’s… Um, do you wanna talk about it?” Frank asked doubtfully. He had a fear that Gerard was paranoid about the notebook hidden under Frank’s seat and wanted him to move so he could take it and hide it some place better. 

“Can I use your phone?” Gerard asked.

“Sure…I guess. Who do you need to call?”

“Never mind,” Gerard said, shaking his head and scurrying back into the kitchen. 

Frank sighed heavily and got up from the couch, already taking his cellphone out of his pocket.

“It’s fine, Gerard. If you want to call someone go ahead. Just don’t…like call the cops on me or anything,” Frank said, trying to make a joke but realizing how serious it could be if the police did get involved. All Gerard had to say was that Frank did this and Frank was keeping him against his will. 

The only proof he’d have of the contrary would be Father X’s videos…and Frank didn’t think officers of the law would appreciate being shown hardcore, violent gay porn.

“I don’t want to call the cops,” Gerard mumbled, looking at the phone in Frank’s hand. He sighed shakily and then reached out for it, suddenly trembling as if he thought Frank was about to lash out at him. 

“It’s okay. Just don’t use up all my minutes.” As soon as the phone was in Gerard’s hand, Frank pulled away in hopes the added distance between them might make Gerard feel more comfortable. 

“I don’t know how to unlock it,” Gerard said after a moment of staring at the dark screen of the phone. 

“Oh.” Frank laughed a little, more uncomfortable than anything else and took the phone back to unlock and it hand it over to Gerard who continued staring at it until Frank brought up the keypad for him to dial a number. 

Without saying anything else, Gerard walking off into the bedroom while dialing the phone and closed the door behind him. Frank returned to the couch and turned up the volume on the television to give Gerard little more privacy.


	7. Chapter 7

_Chapter 7_

When their pizza finally arrived, Frank gave Gerard ten more minutes of peace before walking over to the bedroom door. When he raised his hand to knock, he heard Gerard speaking sharply to whoever was on the other line, sounding both angry and distraught though it was hard to make out his words through the closed door. Frank didn’t need to understand him to know that Gerard had called Craig. 

“What do you mean it’s _my fault!?_ ” Gerard cried, his voice hard and piercing. “I did everything you asked me to! This isn’t—no! _No!_ This isn’t _fair!_ It’s not _fair_ to me.”

The right thing to do would be go back over to his couch and sit down to eat his pizza. But Frank found himself more compelled to stand outside the door eavesdropping. He had no clue what was even happening in his own life right now, and if overhearing a conversation between Gerard and his sadistic dom might give him more context, he was going to listen in. 

“I don’t want to _be here,_ ” Gerard whimpered. “I’m scared, Craig—Father. No, please don’t hang up! Don’t hang up on me! Please, Father! Father, _please._ Please, don’t hang up…”

It was awful. Gerard wasn’t even allowed to break free of their scenes long enough to hold a telephone conversation with his dom—his _partner._ Not even to ask why he’d been discarded like trash.

“Father, please… I just don’t understand why you’re doing this.”

Whatever Craig’s reply had been made his submissive start sobbing.

“That’s not my _fault_ though! I’m not trying to—Father, please! Don’t hang up on me! No—No, wait!” For a moment he was quiet, just crying, and Frank wondered if Craig had followed through on his threat and hung up. “I’m _scared_ here, Father,” Gerard said after a moment. Frank strained to hear him, going so far as to press his ear against the door to catch the words. “No… No, but—”

Frank could imagine that Craig was drilling him about what he had to be afraid of. Had Frank hurt him? No. Had he been raped? No. Then what did he have to be scared of? 

“I don’t know, Father—We don’t _know_ this person. He could—… No. No, but—No! Don’t hang up on me, _please!_ ” Whenever Gerard questioned him, whenever he argued, Craig threatened to end the call, cutting short the only contact Gerard had with his life and the familiar. “But what if he does? Father, I don’t want hurt anymore.”

Then Craig said something that sent Gerard into another fit of hysterics. 

“You can’t do that! No! _No,_ you can’t treat me like this! Don’t hang up, Craig. If you hang up on me I’m _leaving_ you. I’ll _leave_ if you hang up… I don’t _care!_ You’ve had your fun, now take me _home._ ”

There was a long pause before Gerard said anything else.

“You really think we can get away with that?” Gerard asked.

For some reason it struck a chord with Frank and he pulled back from the door. Get away with _what?_ Frank wished he had a landline so he could pick up another phone in the house and hear what Craig was saying. Up until that point Gerard had been arguing about being left with Frank, now he was asking if they could _get away_ with something? 

“Craig… I don’t know. I don’t want to do this anymore. Can’t I just… Craig, _don’t_ hang up on me. Don’t fucking hang up on me! No, I’m not calling you that when—Goddamnit!” 

Frank heard a loud bang and rolled his eyes in irritation, knowing for a fact that was the sound of his cellphone getting chucked across the room. 

“I get that you’re pissed off, but can you _not_ throw my shit around?” Frank said, scanning the floor for his phone. He found it lying next to his dresser, the battery lying beside it and the back panel nowhere to be found. 

Gerard said nothing, just laid face down on the bed crying over Craig. 

“I’m serious,” Frank said, staring at Gerard until he met his gaze. “You break something of mine and you’re out. I don’t care where you go or who takes care of you.”

“He just makes me so _angry,_ ” Gerard said his voice muffled by the pillow. 

“So break up with him and move on with your life,” Frank said. “Don’t throw things around.”

Gerard sighed heavily and fidgeted as if he wanted to roll over but couldn’t because of the lacerations on his back. 

“I can’t leave Craig,” Gerard said.

“Why?” Frank asked, trying to make his tone conversational but it was hard while searching the floor for his battery cover.

“He… I’m nothing without Craig.”

“Why do you say that?” Frank asked, sighing when he finally found his battery cover and snapped it back into place.

“I’ve never… I’ve been with Craig since…”

“Let me guess, you’ve never dated anyone except Craig,” Frank said.

“Yeah.”

“And you’re afraid to move on because you don’t know _how_ to date other people.”

“No,” Gerard mumbled. 

“No?”

“I love Father—”

“And Father loves you,” Frank said, quoting what he’d read at the end of every one of Gerard’s notes on the website. 

“Shut up,” Gerard groaned before sniffing back his tears. “I don’t want to think about that shit right now.”

“Well that ‘shit’ is your relationship,” Frank said. “And your relationship is what got you in this mess in the first place. So you’re going to have to think about it.”

“I hate him for leaving me,” Gerard whispered. “He’s _never_ done this before.”

“I would be more upset about the fact that he let other people…cut up your back like that,” Frank said. He wanted to say rape. He wanted to say he was surprised Gerard wasn’t still in shock after having been brutally, horrifically gang raped and assaulted. 

“I try not to think about that,” Gerard said, almost inaudibly. 

“Gerard, you’re not going to be able to just ignore that it happened,” Frank said. He didn’t know why he kept pushing the issue. Gerard didn’t want to talk about it and Frank had no reason to try to force him. They had pizza waiting in the kitchen that was getting colder by the second and Frank would honestly prefer to eat instead of get into an argument with his temporary roommate. 

“I barely even remember what happened, he had me so high.”

“High?”

“Yeah… Whenever we go to clubs like that he gives me a shot so I don’t…”

“So you don’t…?”

“Panic,” Gerard mumbled. 

“He gives you a shot…so you don’t panic when he lets other guys, you know, _mess_ with you?” Frank asked. He’d never heard of that happening before in any consenting bdsm relationship. 

“I hate shots,” Gerard whispered, as if that was more disturbing than the fact that his dom had him drugged. 

“Gerard, you need to get the fuck away from this guy before he gets you killed.”

“He won’t kill me,” Gerard said softly. “He _needs_ me.”

“Yeah,” Frank said, shaking his head. Craig needed him purely for the sake of controlling him, nothing more and nothing less. He was a sick sadist with no respect for the community he was using as a disguise for his violent tendencies. 

It still made Frank sick to think of that video of Gerard’s first time that Father X had posted. It was just so _wrong_ of him to take someone so pure and innocent and turn them into a slave—a _real_ slave—kept pliant with drugs when the mind was unwilling to play along with the scenes. 

“Gerard?”

“What?”

“You had to have known it, right? Back then?”

“Known _what?_ ”

“That something wasn’t _right_ with Craig? I mean, he was your fucking priest.”

“Well, people said there wasn’t something _right_ about me either,” Gerard snapped. “He was the only one who ever treated me like I was normal. He _loved_ me. He loved _me._ Every bit of me.”

“And how old were you when he ‘loved’ every bit of you?” Frank asked.

“Fuck you.” Gerard’s eyes darkened as he sent Frank a cold glare. The man still managed to look vicious, even with half his face buried in the pillow. 

“Underage,” Frank said, matter-of-factly.

“Fuck. You.”

“The pizza’s here by the way,” Frank said. It wasn’t a very sophisticated segue, but Frank had lost the determination to keep the argument going. Gerard didn’t want to share anything about his past and it was obvious to Frank that he didn’t particularly want to change anything about his present—or his future—with Father X. Frank wasn’t going to push it.

“Fuck you. And fuck your cold fucking pizza,” Gerard muttered. 

Frank rolled his eyes and left the room. He went into the kitchen and got a plate, serving himself three slices of pizza before sighing and fixing up a plate for Gerard as well. He carried the plate and a cup of water into the bedroom and set the plate on the bed beside Gerard’s face and set the cup on the nightstand.

“Eat something. And if you throw it on the floor, you’re fucking cleaning it up,” Frank said. “I’m sick of your attitude.”

“Well I’m sorry,” Gerard snapped, almost sounding sincere if not for his unending irritability.

“Look, I wasn’t trying to offend you, but you have to understand my concern. You were left handcuffed in the bathroom where anyone could’ve gotten you—someone who could’ve taken you back to their place and continued beating the hell out of you. It’s messed up that you can forgive Craig for leaving you like that.”

“That’s because you don’t know what love is,” Gerard said. 

“I don’t know what love is?” Frank asked, one of his eyebrows raising comically high. 

“No,” Gerard said, shrugging and then propping himself up on his elbows as he picked up a piece of pizza. “When you love someone, you don’t put a bunch of stupid conditions on it. You just love them—it’s an all or nothing kind of thing.”

“Right… So if you _love_ someone, you should beat the shit out of them and leave them tied in a public bathroom?”

Gerard sighed heavily and rolled his eyes, taking in a mouthful of pizza and taking the time to chew and swallow before speaking.

“That was punishment,” Gerard mumbled. “You punish people you love sometimes.”

“That was _cruelty._ Okay? There’s no justifying that unless, you know, you beat up a nun or molested an infant or something,” Frank said. 

Gerard frowned and took another bite of pizza. His silence seemed to prove to Frank that his message was getting through. No matter what Gerard said, he didn’t like being left in that bathroom any more than Frank liked finding him there in that state and having to nurse him back to health.

“It really is mean,” Gerard whispered, taking another bite of pizza and then speaking with his mouth full. “The only reason he was mad at me was because I can’t…you know, get it up for him. I wouldn’t have that problem if he didn’t hit me there all the time. It’s his new favorite thing, you know? And it really fuckin’ hurts.”

“Yeah, I know if it fuckin’ hurts,” Frank said.

“Yes. And he would wait until I got it up to start hitting me and…I don’t know. It got to the point where I spent all day terrified he was gonna hit me so I when he was in the mood I was fuckin’ _terrified_ of him.”

“Did you tell him that?”

“Of course I told him!” Gerard snapped, looking at Frank defensively as though be believed Frank thought him stupid. “I begged him to understand that it wasn’t about me not liking him anymore or because I was _cheating_ when he wasn’t at home. He didn’t care… He kept hitting me more and… Next thing I knew I was getting a shot and being taken to the bar.”

“After all that, you _still_ believe he loves you?” Frank asked, trying to keep his tone from becoming condescending. 

Gerard sighed and stared down at his plate of food, deep in thought.

“Craig loves me,” he said, nodding a little and picking up another piece of pizza. 

“If you say so,” Frank said. 

“He does. He just doesn’t…he doesn’t treat me right. He doesn’t treat me like he used to and I don’t know how to get that back.”

“If he stopped treating you right, you need to get out of the relationship. It’s not going to magically get better and if he’s used to getting away with abusing you, he’s not going to stop.”

“It’s not abuse—”

“He let _strangers_ beat the shit out of you and then tied you up in the bathroom at their mercy. That’s _abuse._ That’s _sadism._ You shouldn’t feel like you need to justify it or _put up with it._ ”

“I told him it was hurtful when we were on the phone,” Gerard said quietly. “He doesn’t seem to think it was that big of a deal.”

“That’s because he’s twisted,” Frank mumbled. He realized he would get nowhere trying to rationalize with Gerard by insulting his boyfriend but it was hard. Frank wasn’t a therapist. He’d never been good at the emotional aspects of his relationships and that was probably why his last partner had left him—that among other things… “Listen, I know you’ve been with him a long time and you care about him a lot, but do you really want treated this way? He left you behind where you could’ve _bled out._ You could’ve gotten an infection, you could’ve _died._ You could’ve been in there until morning all by yourself. Do you really want treated like that?”

“No,” Gerard said, shaking his head. “I just wish he took me seriously, you know? I told him on the phone that I didn’t appreciate it and he made a joke of it. He kept making fun of me and then when I yelled at him he started blaming me and then threatened to hang up. It’s not _fair._ He’s _never_ been that mean to me before.”

“I know it’s still really soon for you but, Gerard, now’s the time to get away from him. He’s out of town, I’m here. If you’ve got family you can stay with, I’d _gladly_ help move you out of his place.”

Gerard was quiet and then set down his pizza and laid back down.

“If I go home they’re all going to laugh at me,” Gerard mumbled.

“Laugh at you?”

“They told me it would never work out because Craig was older and all that… His age doesn’t matter to me. It _never_ has. I just don’t want them to… I don’t want to give them the satisfaction.”

“What’s more important here, Gerard? Spite and pride or your fuckin’ life? You could’ve _died._ Do you understand that? You could have _AIDS_ right now because of what he let those guys do to you.”

Gerard let out a low moan and closed his eyes tightly.

“I don’t want to think about that—please don’t make me think about that,” Gerard muttered.

“Don’t make you think about it? It’s a very _real_ issue. I could’ve gotten it too from handling all your blood that night. You were a _mess._ ”

“Were? I’m _still_ bleeding.”

“And you’re gonna be bleeding for the next few months probably. And do you know why?”

“Because of fuckin’ Craig,” Gerard grumbled. 

“So…do you have family?”

“Yeah,” Gerard said quietly.

“Okay… You don’t have to make any decisions right now, but I want you to think about it. Do you want to wait for _Craig_ to get home and go back to that fucking nightmare, or do you want to go stay with some relatives who maybe _might_ nag at you for dating an older guy?”

“My back really hurts,” Gerard whispered. 

“You just took a pill…”

Gerard let out a low whimper and nuzzled the pillow under his head. 

“I really want another pill,” he whined. “It hurts so fuckin’ bad.”

“Do you want me to get you another?” Frank asked. 

Gerard whimpered again and started clutching the pillow in his fist. 

“I’ll get you the bottle, okay?” Frank said, collecting Gerard’s plate stepping out of the room. When he came back he had the pill bottle and glass of water which he set on the nightstand next to the bed. “I’m gonna go watch tv for a bit before I go to bed. Do you want me to shut the overhead light off for you or do you want to stay up?”

“You can turn it off,” Gerard whispered, crawling to the edge of the bed so he could get the pill bottle. Frank watched him struggle for a moment before taking the bottle from him and uncapping it before handing it back. Gerard mumbled out a brief thank you before shaking two of the pills into his hand. He took them both into his mouth before Frank could stop him or warn him that he was taking way too much medicine, and then grabbed the cup of water. He spilled a fair amount on the blankets and then finished the rest of the glass and set it back on the nightstand. 

“If you need anything later just let me know,” Frank said. “I’ll be on the couch.”

“You can sleep here,” Gerard mumbled, squirming uncomfortably on the bed. 

“I’m fine on the couch,” Frank said, trying to imply with his tone that he didn’t care to sleep next to Gerard again tonight. 

“I want you to stay,” Gerard whispered.

“I’ll be on the couch,” Frank said, a little more firmly. Before Gerard could protest, Frank turned off the light and left the room. He felt a little bit guilty as he walked over to the couch and kept passing little glances toward the closed bedroom door as he watched the nightly news. 

If Gerard started crying again, Frank would go comfort him, he told himself, but not until then. He had no reason to start getting attached to this man. Not only was Gerard taken, he was also _damaged._ Badly, badly damaged.

But if he was really that damaged, wouldn’t he be crying by now?

Frank kept his eyes trained on his bedroom door as he laid down on the couch and made to go to sleep. He was anticipating Gerard to cry out for him like a child the way he had the night before, but Gerard was silent. 

In a way, Frank almost found himself disappointed…


	8. Chapter 8

_Chapter 8_

Father X posted six videos overnight, each one becoming more and more twisted and gruesome. The first of the six was one of their classic videos, Submissive G’s first time being bound to the bed. He safeworded twice in the video—once because his hand went numb and a second time Father X had hurt him during penetration—but managed to make it to orgasm before the video ended. The next three videos were more of the same-old, same-old sex with teasing and toys and straps. The fifth video showed a different group session at some dark sex club where G went from giggling and kissing the men surrounding him to breaking down into hysterics within a matter of minutes. He wasn’t gagged and no one was using his mouth, so—through his headphones—Frank got to hear every bit of Gerard’s desperate screams. 

He used his safeword over and over but relief never came. One of the men in the video kept shouting “you’ve gotta learn, you’ve gotta learn somehow” until Gerard’s body was dropped onto the floor. It wasn’t nearly as gory as what Frank had seen at the Jailer’s Den (Gerard hadn’t been whipped or strapped at this club) but there was still blood running down his thighs when he was forced to stand up and limp out of the frame of the video. Father X had no love or respect for G at all. To him, G was just a toy to be played with and broken—valueless. 

It was disgusting. 

The sixth video was nothing but pure sadism. Frank couldn’t tell if it were an old video or a new one since G was blindfolded his face was swollen with tears even before the clip started. Frank didn’t want to watch it and only saw the first two minutes before shaking his head and closing the window. More of Gerard being strapped and beaten for his dom’s pleasure, not his own. 

How had things been so horrible for so long without it ever showing in the videos before? Or was Frank just now seeing them with different eyes? Had he not seen what he had in the Jailer’s Den—if he didn’t have Submissive G sleeping face-down in his bed at this very moment—would he be watching these videos with his hands down his pants and tissue ready? 

No, Frank thought. No, these videos were different. These videos were a peek behind the curtain into the real dynamic Father G and Submissive X had. What transpired at the Jailer’s Den had only served to encourage Craig to post his darkest videos—and most of the comments Frank had read were positive. People _loved_ seeing G hurt and it made Frank sick to his stomach. 

Didn’t they realize Gerard didn’t _want_ this? That he didn’t _deserve_ this? Or did they even fucking care about him at all? People used to _worship_ G the same way G worshiped his dom when the site first started, but all of his true fans had been chased off replaced with sickos and sadists of the very worst type. Somewhere in between the gentle, classic videos and the hell Gerard had endured at the Jailer’s Den, Submissive G had gone from an S &M slave to a _true_ slave.

He had no say in what happened to him and his safewords were wasted on deaf ears. Limits weren’t ignored for the sake of pushing boundaries and showing Gerard realms of pain-pleasure he never thought imaginable—no, they were ignored because Craig liked to see his sex slave squirm. He liked having something helpless to take his frustrations out on and it made Frank want to set the man’s house on fire and destroy his little dungeon. 

He wondered what Gerard would do if he _did_ burn down Craig’s house. Would he give in and go back to his parents or would he just run off with Craig to the next house, and the next? It was obvious Craig had no shortage of money. Gerard didn’t have to work or think, so it would be easier on him to just go where Craig told him to go—even if the price he paid for all the handouts was flesh and blood. 

Frank turned off his computer and set up his makeshift bed on the couch. It was hard to sleep and his brain kept churning out image after image from that night in bar and all of Father X’s videos. He was still trying to make sense of it all and it didn’t get him anywhere. 

What made someone young and attractive like Gerard stay with an old, sadistic ex-priest? Where was the allure in that? If he got with this man when he’d been a teenager, there had to have been something he was running from. Something at home, probably. 

Issues with acceptance, probably. 

After all, it was through frustration and latent anger that he stumbled upon the darker side of sex. He didn’t take his rage out on his submissives—at least not after he’d figured out what the hell he was doing—but if he hadn’t felt so restricted in his household he probably would’ve grown up “completely normal”—that is to say, completely vanilla. He wouldn’t have kept digging through the internet seeking people who would talk to a messed up teenager about their taboo sex. 

Yeah, Gerard must’ve grown up the same way only instead of hooking up with an older guy he met offline, Gerard ended up with his family’s priest.

Frank still found that disgusting. Maybe it was just his good old fashioned Catholic upbringing, but there was something particularly nauseating about a priest taking advantage of a young, lonely boy. Even if Craig stayed with Gerard for years after their relationship started, he’d still used him at the start and continued using him—turning him into the perfect submissive, the perfect _slave_ too embarrassed and ashamed to run off when the eroticism left the beatings and the rough sex became rape.

Craig must’ve had one hell of a hold over Gerard, though, to keep him from running off. Frank hardly knew him at all, but Gerard didn’t seem like the type to back down in an argument or let himself be taken advantage of—yet at the same time he let himself get beat to hell and still claimed he was loved by the person who did it.

So what chain was left binding him?—It couldn’t be love. Love didn’t keep people trapped. Fear? Obviously that was a factor, but it wasn’t the only thing going on… 

Or maybe the opportunity for escape simply never came. Maybe Craig worked from home and when he left he kept Gerard in chains. There were pictures of them out with friends lining the stairwell, but those photos never showed Gerard on his own.

Maybe he was never on his own. Maybe that was why he had to hang a sign reading “Help Me” from his office window in hopes that someone might see and break him out of his prison. 

Stockholm Syndrome, Frank decided as he fell asleep. It was a hell of a thing.

( ) ( ) ( )

The whole day, like before, Frank spent his time at work wondering if his home was alright. He was terrified that Gerard would burn the place, or wreck the place, or have some people break in and steal everything. He was about to call his mother at one point and tell her to do a drive-by just to check on it, but he didn’t want to explain the bloodied man in his bed or how exactly he’d been in the right place at the right time to find him.

There were some aspects of his sex life he didn’t want his mother involved in, and the Jailer’s Den was one of them. 

So Frank had to push through his day at the warehouse, trying not to look anxious or fuck up the orders he was packing because he was so damned distracted. He had two mouths to feed now instead of one and he didn’t know how long that would last so he couldn’t afford to lose his job now.

After an eight hour shift, Frank picked up some fast food for himself and Gerard and then returned to his home, glad to see it still standing—at least it wasn’t on fire.

When he opened the door, his first sight was Gerard lying on the floor with his notebook—either writing something or sketching—and he didn’t even look up when Frank came in.

“I got us some food. You hungry?”

“Yes,” Gerard said, sounding spacey and uninterested in what Frank had to say. He was sketching, Frank noticed, not writing, and Frank was nervous about what the image would be this time—another monster, another nude woman getting disemboweled? 

“What are you working on?” Frank asked as he locked his door and moved through to the kitchen table where he placed the food.

“Mnm… There was a cool bird outside today.”

“Yeah?”

“Mhm…”

Frank stepped cautiously over to Gerard and peered over his shoulder from a few paces away. He expected to see a mutilated version of whatever bird Gerard had seen gracing the page, but instead it was just a sketch of a cardinal—a very good sketch. If it weren’t in black and white, it might’ve even looked real. The shading that Gerard was working on was impeccable.

“You draw really well,” Frank said. 

“You stare at something long enough, you learn how to draw it right,” Gerard mumbled. “There’s lots of time to draw at Father’s.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah…”

“Doesn’t he ever leave?”

“No.”

“No?”

_“No!_ Stop repeating everything I say. It’s really annoying. Go away.”

Frank rolled his eyes and went into his bedroom to change clothes. As he was changing into his ripped jeans his eyes landed on the orange prescription bottle lying at the side of his bed. It was Gerard’s pain pills. 

Not wanting them to get lost in the sheets if Gerard found he needed one, Frank intended to take the bottle back into the kitchen where the antibiotics and the other drugs were kept. However, something seemed off about the bottle. It had been practically full yesterday and now it was down to three quarters of the bottle. 

“Hey, Gerard?” Frank asked, carrying the bottle with him back into the living room.

“Mnm?”

“How many pills did you take today?”

Gerard said nothing.

“You need to answer.”

“It hurt, so I took a couple this morning and…maybe a couple more before you got here.”

“Okay, that’s too many. You realize these things are dangerous, right?”

“Mhm.”

“Gerard, I’m being serious. You could fuck up your liver with this shit or make your kidneys fail or something. Does that sound like fun to you?”

“No,” Gerard hummed. Even when Frank raised his voice, Gerard didn’t respond to the tone. He was high and even if Frank started beating him, he probably wouldn’t feel it.

“Well, tomorrow I’m taking this bottle with me so you don’t OD.”

“You can’t do that!” Gerard snapped. 

“I’m not going to let you stay here and poison yourself. It’s not happening.”

“If I’m hurting, I’m going to take a pill! Give me that bottle!”

“I’ll give you the bottle when you can get up and come get it yourself,” Frank said, knowing Gerard wouldn’t physically fight him.

“Come on, you don’t know how bad this _hurts._ I just took them until the pain stopped—once it stopped, I quit.”

“You need to give them time to work. I don’t mind you doubling up, but don’t take four or five at once. I’m not kidding. It could _kill_ you.”

“I don’t care,” Gerard said, glaring at Frank fiercely before looking back down at his sketch and continuing his work.

“Well, you should care.”

“Why? If I live, I go back to Craig and _he_ kills me. Or has his friends kill me. At least this way I have a say in how I go.”

“Yeah—really fucking painfully.”

“If I took the whole bottle I’d be asleep and wouldn’t know.”

“Yeah, you’re not getting these back,” Frank said, pocketing the bottle before emptying the fast food bag. “I got us subs for dinner. They had bottles of orange juice so I got that for you.”

“I’m not hungry.”

“You’re eating. You need to dilute the pills in your system.”

“Don’t want to dilute the pills in my system,” Gerard muttered, going back to being out-of-it and hazy. 

“Just eat,” Frank said, putting Gerard’s sub on a plate and carrying it as well as the bottle of juice over to Gerard’s spot on the carpet.

“I’m working…”

“You need to stop working and eat your dinner. You didn’t even make food for lunch, did you?”

“I was drawing…”

“You were popping pills—now eat.”

“No.”

“Eat…”

“I don’t want to.”

Frank waited for Gerard’s pencil to lift off the page before grabbing the notebook away from him and pushing the plate into its space on the floor. He expected Gerard to lash out at him, but instead the other man just looked confused—as though he thought the notebook had just vanished. 

“You can get it back after you eat something, okay?”

“Fine,” Gerard whispered, picking up his sandwich and taking a bite. Frank decided to sit on the floor beside him, just to stay close and promote some image of unity between the two of them. They couldn’t sit together at the table—not with Gerard’s injuries—and he didn’t want to sit by himself. “You have a nice place for one person,” Gerard mumbled after a few moments.

“Yeah?”

“Yes…”

“Well, that’s factory work for you. It’s shitty work for good money.”

“I wish I had a job.”

“It would be nice to get out of the house once and while, right?” Frank asked.

“Mhm… Craig never lets me out anymore. Not unless we’re going to a bar or a club.”

“Where did he take you before?”

“Oh… I don’t know. Everywhere. We went on dates every Wednesday and every other Saturday. He always found someplace new for us to go because he likes being the city. We went to…art galleries and wine tastings and…amusement parks and all kinds of places.” Gerard looked haunted by the memories rather than comforted.

“And when did that change?”

“A year ago,” Gerard whispered. “I don’t know what happened to him. He loved me—then one day he hated me.”

“That fast?” Frank asked.

“We were gonna go out—it was Wednesday. I made fun of the tie he was wearing because I wanted him to wear a different one. He started yelling and pushed me into the hallway and…”

“What did he do?” Frank asked quietly.

“Knocked me down the stairs and kicked me once I was at the bottom,” Gerard whispered, a tear rolling down his cheek. “He said he was sorry, but…after that I never got to go outside again. Not without him.”

“It’s weird that he just snapped that way.”

“It’s because I went to rehab,” Gerard said, pushing his plate away even though he’d only taken two bites of the sub. 

“Rehab for what?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“I don’t understand you two.”

“That’s because you believe what he puts on that website. Those videos…they’re so old. Some of them are from when I was a kid and no one even notices. I was only sixteen the first time we were together and he filmed me.”

“What?” Frank asked, suddenly losing his appetite. In those “classic videos” Gerard did _not_ look sixteen, but that didn’t change the fact that it was child pornography. 

“I was sixteen when I finally let him. He said he had to film it so if anyone found out he could prove it was consensual. And the camera just never went away. I don’t think… I don’t think we’ve ever had sex without the camera.”

“That’s so wrong,” Frank said, not sure if he meant Gerard’s relationship or if his brain was still hung up on the fact that he’d been watching illegal porn. 

“He’s got thousands of videos,” Gerard said, his tone drowsy as he laid his head down on the floor.

“Stay awake and eat,” Frank said. He took the pill bottle out of his pocket and took note of the drug type. He replaced the bottle and took out his phone, searching what dosage was lethal so he would know whether or not he needed to call for an ambulance or call poison control. The dosage Gerard had was small, Frank determined, and though he couldn’t have any more of his pain pills for the rest of the day, his life wasn’t in any danger. “Eat, Gerard.”

“I don’t want my family to see those tapes,” Gerard whispered, still crying as he forced himself to take another bite of his sandwich.

“Why would they see the tapes? Is that something Craig said would happen if you tried to leave?”

“No. But he would do it…”

“I’m kind of confused, Gerard, because you say you don’t like the tapes, but you’re smiling in a lot of them.”

“I like the other men,” Gerard said. “They’re usually nicer to me than Father. It used to be _fun._ Then he just kept telling them to hit me and hit me harder and all I want to do is cry. But then he gets mad because the people online complain—and whenever they complain he keeps count and he whips me for it.”

“Wait—he punishes you because people don’t like what _he’s_ doing.”

“Yeah… I hate that website. He never even told me when he started it. The first time I found out was the first time he put my face on it.”

“So he’s the one who writes all those posts from you then?”

“Not all of them, but most.”

“It still doesn’t make sense to me,” Frank said as he picked at his food. The discussion had soured his appetite but he didn’t feel like staring at Gerard so he focused on his sandwich instead. “You don’t like the videos, you don’t like being treated bad, you don’t like the website—what are you still doing with him?”

“I don’t know!” Gerard moaned, whining like a frustrated little kid and dropping his face onto the floor. “I like some of it—I mean, it’s fun, it’s sexy… But then he just gets crazy and by that point I can’t just walk off!”

“You can do better. I mean, what was an attractive sixteen-year-old doing with an old fucked up priest anyway?”

“He was _nice_ to me. Maybe _you_ think I look good, but no one else did. All I ever heard was how ugly and out of shape I was. He was the first person to actually…” Gerard trailed off and picked his face up off the floor. “Didn’t you ever have a first boyfriend? Did _you_ want to be the one to end it?”

“Yeah, I mean, breakups suck but when the relationship isn’t fun anymore I don’t see a point in muddling through it.” 

“I just didn’t want to be alone, you know? He took me in so I didn’t have to be with Mom and Dad anymore, he gave me everything I wanted—even when we got found out and he was kicked out of the church he wasn’t even mean to me. He said he loved me and we’d get through it.”

“Then…he just pushed you down a flight of stairs one day and the honeymoon was over? You were with him, what, four or five years before he snapped?”

“I told you!” Gerard spat in that childish, pouting voice before putting his face back down on the floor. “I went to rehab—he didn’t like me after that.”

“You went to rehab…for what?”

“I don’t want to talk about it!”

“Well I want to know. I took you in, I deserve to know who the fuck you are.”

“Fine,” Gerard mumbled, turning his face to the side and looking up at Frank. He stayed that way for a long time and then said, quite simply, “I don’t want to talk about it.”

Frank rolled his eyes and took another bite of food. 

“Let me guess,” he said with his mouthful. “You like pain pills.”

“I like…Xanax, and Trazadone, and…and that other stuff.”

“Anxiety meds, nice…”

“Father could get me anything I wanted… Since he was older he could get prescribed just about anything he asked for. I got opiates and anti-psych meds…anything I wanted, really. Anything I needed.”

Anything he needed to keep him spaced out, dependent, and in line, Frank thought. 

“Sounds like you enjoyed it—so what was the rehab all about?”

“Didn’t want to be like my dad,” Gerard whispered. “I stopped taking the pills but I felt the same…found out Father was just crushing them up and feeding them to me with dinner. Went to rehab so I could get away from it. As soon as I got home…” Gerard trailed off and picked up his sandwich to take a bite without ever finishing his sentence.

“So I take it your dad had something of a drug problem?” Frank asked, giving Gerard a way out of the discussion about his dom. 

“My dad was a dealer. And like most dealers, he’s his own best customer. I don’t know if he still does it, but I figure he does. Nobody changes on that side of town…”

“So other than your dad, do you have any family?”

“Mom,” Gerard said, shrugging his shoulders.

“And she’s—”

“Don’t make me call my own mother a crackwhore.”

“Okay,” Frank said, eyebrows rising in surprise. He guessed things made more sense now. Young kid from a bad place decides to run off to be with the first person who seems nice and appears decent. That wasn’t unheard of in bad neighborhoods—nor was it out of the ordinary for that supposed Good Samaritan to turn into a nightmare.

“I’ve got a little brother, too. Mikey.”

“And what’s he do?”

“I don’t know. He was…seventeen the last time I saw him. Smoked a lot of weed but that’s all I know. When we were kids we said we’d never end up like Mom and Dad. Now look at me.”

“You tried to get yourself clean,” Frank said, not liking the look of remorse that crossed Gerard’s face as he picked at his food. “You were just with an asshole who knew if you straightened out you’d leave him.”

“I wasn’t planning to leave him. I just wanted to be…better. I’ll probably never be able to function without the pills, but I’d like to at least be able to get out of bed without taking a Xanax and to sleep with Trazadone.”

“You don’t have those here,” Frank said, not sure what he was trying to imply. Gerard wasn’t exactly _living_ here—he was lying face-down all day trying not to move in fear of setting off a domino effect of pain. 

“Yeah.”

“And I think I’m going to keep ahold of your pills for a little while because I don’t want to come home to find you dead from organ failure.”

“Probably a good idea,” Gerard muttered, not at all sounding pleased about the idea.

“But I have some bad news though.”

“Bad news?” Gerard asked, looking up from his sub with a pathetic expression.

“If you want your wounds to heal and you don’t want to get an infection…you’ve gotta take a bath tonight.”

“I hate you,” Gerard said.

“You can’t even feel anything right now, so I don’t see why you’re complaining.”

“I can feel—I have feelings!”

“I never said you didn’t have feelings. I’m saying you’ve already over-dosed so I know your body is probably pretty numb right now—so after you eat it’s probably best that you take a bath.”

“Fuck you,” Gerard grumbled. 

“I’m sorry, but you’ve gotta do it. Otherwise you’re gonna get gangrene or something and I doubt they can amputate your fuckin’ spine.”

Gerard passed Frank one more pitiful glance and then returned his focus to his sandwich, eating slowly and looking practically devastated once he was finished. Even if his mind was hazy and his body was tingling and partially-numb, the bath water would change that for the worst.


	9. Chapter 9

_Chapter 9_

Gerard fought him hard, but eventually he resigned himself to his fate. Frank knew it would be painful for him even with the massive amount of drugs in his system, and he felt pity for the other man no matter how obnoxious or disrespectful he behaved. Frank imagined that if he were in the same position, he would not want to strip bare in front of a man he barely knew and immerse himself in a bathtub full of water that would break open all of his wounds yet again. It was just another vicious reminder of the torture he’d endured at Father X’s hands—and the hands of all those other men that night—a pain that kept getting worse and worse with each day. 

“I fuckin’ hate you,” Gerard said, over and over as he watched Frank filling the bathtub. 

Frank knew the words weren’t really directed at him. Gerard knew it was necessary and that was why he submitted. It wasn’t out of habit or out of fear—he caved when Frank insisted because he knew that if he didn’t keep his wounds clean he _would_ get an infection and he could possibly die from it. And who wanted to die from injuries like Gerard had?

“I hate you so fucking much,” Gerard repeated as he began stripping off his baggy sweat clothes. “Do you have any idea how much this is gonna fuckin’ hurt?”

“I can imagine,” Frank said. “But it needs to be done and I’m sorry.”

He tried not to look at Gerard’s skin as he undressed, but it was hard to avoid. The bathroom was small and although Gerard was hesitating to get near it, there was no place he could really stand in the bathroom that wasn’t within sight of the tub. The cuts on the fronts of his thighs weren’t as bad as before. They were still red, but they had healed over with heavy scabs that the water probably wouldn’t disturb too much. Frank didn’t let his gaze wander any higher than that. He knew Gerard had injuries in places much more intimate and even if he was Gerard’s temporary caretaker, he had no right to gander at him just because he could. 

“This is gonna fuckin’ hurt. Shit. I don’t want to do this…”

“It’ll be okay. If the pain gets too bad I can take you back to the hospital.”

“I don’t want to go back to the fucking hospital! Do you know what Craig will do if he finds out I went _back!?_ He’s pissed off that I went there in the first place.”

“Okay, enough about Craig! The guy is an asshole! He should’ve realized that you needed medical attention. In fact, I’m pretty sure he saw to it that you did—then you’d need pain pills, then he could get you hooked again! I have a feeling that’s what _all this_ is about. He drugs you, gets the shit kicked out of you, leaves you so you’re depressed—leaves you with some guy who could very well have killed you—and then makes sure that of all your prescriptions that _he got filled,_ the only name brand bottle is the pain killers.”

“Craig wouldn’t do this just to get me hooked again…” Even Gerard didn’t sound convinced. “If he wants me to take pills, he makes me take the pills. He wouldn’t need to do all of this…”

“Forcing you to do it is one thing, Gerard. Getting you to do it yourself, now that’s a whole other power trip.”

“Yeah? How would you know?” 

Frank looked up at him but Gerard was staring down at the water. His face was clouded with pain and fear as he tried to mentally talk himself into climbing into the tub. 

“Because I’ve done it before—not with drugs or anything crazy—but, you know…with partners it’s more fun when you can get them to punish themselves or whatever.”

“I’m not talking about sex games here! This is my _fucking life!_ ”

“And to Craig, your life is a game. You’re nothing more than a toy to him. He uses you, he hurts you, he shares you with people who don’t take care of you—he doesn’t care about your life. It’s one thing to have a lifestyle where you pretend the person is just a worthless sack of skin, but you should _never_ make them feel that it’s real. And Craig does that to you. He thinks you’re nothing—he’s got you thinking you’re nothing—and it makes me fuckin’ sick.”

“Whatever,” Gerard muttered, taking the initiative to step forward and place one of his feet into the water of the tub. He took a shaking breath and then moved the other into the water as well and slowly sank down onto his bruised knees. 

Frank looked away as Gerard slowly forced himself to lie down in the water on his front, unable to put any pressure on his back or thighs. At first it didn’t seem to be so bad and Gerard only emitted a sharp hiss of discomfort, but the longer he lay there the more he began to hiss and then groan. 

“Are you gonna fucking help me or not?” Gerard asked, his voice shaking horribly. Frank finally turned back to the tub and saw the Gerard had his hands clenched into tight fists that shook just as much as his voice.

“Yeah,” Frank said. He’d only filled the tub enough that Gerard’s back would only be slightly immersed—maybe an inch of water over top of it so that he wouldn’t have to splash too much to get him clean. “You need to come up out of the water a little bit for me to be able to…wipe you down.” Scrub had come to mind, but scrubbing would do nothing but break the scabs. Frank had gotten a bar of antibacterial soap and lathered a soft cloth with it. 

Wipe wasn’t the right word either for how he would have to get Gerard clean. To drag the cloth over his skin would cause more breakage. Frank would just have to dab and press at the wounds to get the soap onto them and clean them out.

Maybe the hospital should’ve admitted him for the night… Frank didn’t see how anyone short of a medical professional could do this without causing more harm than help, but he couldn’t see Gerard handling it too well if he invited Ray over to help out. 

Frank began his work, trying to clean Gerard’s wounds as best he could without causing too much harm or breaking open the thicker scabs. In no time at all the water had turned a pale pink, then a light red, and Gerard was shaking and crying silent tears as he kept his hands clenched in tight fists.

“I’m going to have to drain the tub,” Frank whispered, setting the damp, soapy cloth aside. Red streams ran from the cloth, down the white edge of the tub into the bath water. “Okay?”

“Whatever,” Gerard hissed. “Why not just set me on fucking fire while you’re at it?”

“I’m sorry,” Frank said. He couldn’t imagine how much pain Gerard was in—and there was no way around it. The wounds needed cleaned or they would get infected. He could die if he wasn’t properly cared for. 

He pulled the plug on the tub and let the water drain, his stomach churning when he saw the red beads of water that remained in the grooves in the plastic tub. He adjusted the temperature and began filling the tub again, asking Gerard over and over if the temperature was okay. 

Gerard said he was fine and submitted himself to more of the painful touches as Frank washed his back and thighs, all the way down his legs to his feet. Frank drained the tub a second time and kept rinsing it until most of the red and pink drops of water disappeared down the drain. 

“We need to wash your hair.”

“Fuck my hair,” Gerard hissed, letting his head drop down onto the bathtub floor. He sounded completely exhausted and Frank noticed that he kept swallowing hard as though trying hard not to be sick. 

“Can you get on your knees so…so you can wash your front and then I can probably wash your hair in the sink.”

“I said _fuck_ my hair… I don’t want to wash my hair.”

“You need to. It’s all greasy, Gerard. I know you’re in pain, but you’ll feel better after this, I promise.”

“Well I can’t possibly feel fuckin’ worse.”

“Come on. I’ll help you.”

Frank had to pull Gerard up onto his knees and then began refilling the tub. He thought to ask Gerard if he wanted a towel or cloth to kneel on since his knees were still bruised, but since Gerard wasn’t complaining Frank wouldn’t bring it up. Gerard was able to wash himself, even accepting some of Frank’s medicated face wash to help fight the oil in his skin. He washed fast, desperate to get off his knees.

He was able to talk Gerard into washing his hair in the sink while the tub was draining, though Frank was certain more of the soap and water ended up on Frank’s bathroom counter than in Gerard’s hair. 

After his hair was clean, Frank set to drying him off. It was hard to bring himself to dab at the bloodied skin, especially when Gerard’s tears turned from the occasional, quiet gasp to heavy, agonized sobs. His body was trembling before Frank even started applying the antiseptic and ointments. 

Finally, after over an hour and half of work, Frank finished wrapping Gerard’s back and thighs with bandages. He was able to escort Gerard back into the bedroom and let him lay face down on the bed. 

“Can I get you anything?” Frank asked, keeping his voice as soft and gentle as possible. 

“Water,” Gerard choked out. His pride, all of his attitude and venom, had been washed down the drain. He was back to being the sad creature Frank had scraped off the men’s room floor and it was disheartening. Frank dared to admit that he _missed_ Gerard’s awful attitude and rudeness. It was better than the broken sobs.

“Okay.”

“Can I use your phone?” Gerard asked, his voice strained and trembling.

“That depends…who are you planning to call?”

“Not Craig,” Gerard whispered. “Please.”

“Okay. Let me get you that water first.”

Frank washed his hands in the kitchen sink before pouring Gerard a cup of ice water and taking it to him. He made sure his phone was charged before carrying it with him into the bedroom and placing it on the nightstand next to Gerard. 

“If my phone starts to die just call for me. I’ll bring you the charger. Okay?”

“Okay,” Gerard whispered, sniffing as he folded his hand around the cup of water. Frank helped support the cup as Gerard took a drink. The other man’s hand was shaking so badly and Frank was fearful he would spill the glass before he could ever take a sip on his own. 

Gerard finished most of the cup before he pulled away and moved to set the cup down. Frank offered to refill it, but Gerard shook his head and grabbed for the cell phone. Frank unlocked it for him and then reluctantly stepped out of the room and closed the door.

( ) ( ) ( )

The first thing Gerard heard after the ringing stopped was muffled voices, then a shrill laugh from a woman. There was a brief argument on the other side of the phone before the woman said, “Sorry, Mikey’s not taking calls tonight because he’s about to get B-U-S-Y—Hey!” The girl’s voice faded and Gerard heard a man’s voice tell her to be quiet. 

“Hello?”

“Mikey?”

“Yeah. Who is this?”

“Gerard…”

“Gerard? Whoa—Hey, what’s up?” 

The woman Mikey was with started whining and mewling for attention but Mikey promptly told her to shut up. There was silence and then the slam of a door. 

“You still there?”

“Yeah,” Gerard answered. “Are you…are you busy?”

“What, you mean that girl? Nah. Probably ‘bout to give me herpes. What’s up?”

“I… I need a favor.”

“I figured,” Mikey said. Gerard heard a sound like a refrigerator door being opened and then closed, followed by the snapping of a pop tab. “What’s Craig got you into this time?”

“He…

“Usually when you call from jail it’s a collect call—what’s going on?”

“I’m not in jail, Mikey,” Gerard said, swallowing hard. He was still sick to his stomach and even though there was a copious amount of drugs still in his system, he still felt all the pain. 

“Well, I’m sure you still need bailed out of something. What happened?”

“He ditched me…and I’m with strangers.”

“What do you mean—he ditched… What? Like he finally broke it off with you? Wow. I didn’t think that would ever happen. We should fuckin’ celebrate.”

“He didn’t dump me, Mikey, he just left me for a while.”

“What? You’re not making any sense. He left you, but you’re still together?”

“I don’t want to get into it, but he…he went away for a while and when he gets back we can be together again. But right now he’s making me stay with this person I don’t know.”

“Isn’t your name on the title to the house? Make this guy leave.”

“I’m not at Craig’s.”

“Then… _go_ to Craig’s.”

“I can’t walk,” Gerard whispered.

“Ah, shit. What did you do this time?”

He heard Mikey take a long drink and sighed. 

“Please, I just need somewhere else to stay. Somewhere…somewhere I know.”

“Shit, Gerard, I don’t… I don’t have room for you. I’m so sorry.”

“I can just stay on the couch.”

“I don’t have my own place, Gerard. I just go with the money, you know?”

“How did you lose your apartment?”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Mikey groaned. 

“What happened?”

Mikey groaned for the longest time, not forming words just frustrated noises, and then confessed, “Sold some coke to an undercover cop. I was lucky though—I only lost everything I own and got three months in jail.”

“That doesn’t sound lucky.”

“Better than three _years_ in jail.”

“I guess. Mikey, if you’d told me…I could’ve had Craig—”

“I’m not living with Craig. You’re out of your fuckin’ mind if you think I’m staying with Craig. He’d be pimping me out in a minute, just like he does with you.”

“He doesn’t pimp me—I sleep around because I want to.”

“Whatever. It wasn’t like I could call you anyway,” Mikey said. “Your cell phone has been out of service for months.”

Gerard sighed and squeezed his eyes shut tight. He wanted a way out of this—a way to sneak out without Craig noticing. 

“Do you think Mom and Dad are still around?”

“Shit—what did that guy do to you?” Mikey asked. 

“What?”

“If you’re asking for Mom and Dad…what the hell happened?”

“Do you…do you want to come over? Frank will let you stay.”

“Frank being…the guy Craig dumped you off with? Your adult babysitter?”

“He’s nice, Mikey. He won’t…rob you or anything.”

“He’s friends with Craig. I’d be lucky to wake up in the morning.”

“Please. I miss you.”

Mikey sighed and Gerard heard him take another drink. 

“Where are you staying?”

“Um…”

“You don’t even know.”

“In Jersey.”

“Oh in Jersey,” Mikey said, mocking him with laughter. 

“If I get an address, will you come? I need you. I need someone I know.”

“I was supposed to be out tonight. I’ve got bills to pay.”

“You mean people to pay,” Gerard muttered. 

“And my phone bill—and some old legal fees.”

“Mikey, I need you. If you come, I’ll make Craig give you the money to pay off your debt.”

“Okay, I don’t want handouts from Father Psychopath.”

“I won’t let him hurt you,” Gerard said softly. 

“What the hell are you going to do to protect me? All he has to do is _look_ at you and you’re bowing on the floor in front of him.”

“Well he _hurt_ me!” Gerard said, sobbing. “I don’t know what else to do. I tried getting clean, I tried leaving—he just trapped me. I’ve got nowhere else to go. Please. _Please._ I need you.”

“Fine. Text me the address and I’ll get there when I get there.”

“Okay. Thank you.”

“Just know, Gerard, that this is the last time crying is going to get you what you want. That shit worked with Mom when we were kids, but…it doesn’t work with me.”

“Mikey, I’m not crying because of you. I—”

There was a beep and when Gerard looked down at the phone the screen showed that the call had been ended.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hopefully this fic is starting to look more like its own entity and less like Dogs. Stay tuned for chapter 10 when Mikey makes his grand entrance!


	10. Chapter 10

_Chapter 10_

Frank’s heart was already pounding in his chest long before Gerard’s estranged brother knocked on the door. It was going on eleven-thirty at night, but Gerard had told him to expect Mikey to arrive late. After some prodding, Gerard confessed it was because his brother was most likely out selling drugs to pay his debts. 

Pedophilic, Sadist Priest. Abused, Addict Sex Slave. Drug Dealer. 

Frank was terrified of who else would be added to his new list of acquaintances. 

Frank took a deep breath before standing up from his couch and crossing the room. He got on tip toe to peer out the peephole in his door and swallowed hard when all he could see was the back of someone’s head. He had on a ball cap, and when he finally turned back around, he had on sunglasses as well. 

He tried telling himself that Gerard’s brother would have no reason to hurt him, but there was no telling when he would reach the bottom of the chasm. If Craig didn’t get possessive and come kill him, then maybe Gerard’s brother would shoot him and rob him for money for drugs.

The man outside knocked again and looked around again.

Frank let out the breath he’d been holding and unlocked the door. If Gerard’s brother was going to kill him, there was nothing he could do about it now. He might as well let him in get the process started. 

“Hey,” Frank said, trying to sound cool and casual but knowing he had to have sounded as scared shitless as he felt.

“S’up?” Gerard’s brother answered, one of his eyebrows raised in an arch over his large sunglass lenses. His face, from what Frank could see of it, was far more angular than Gerard’s—and his skin was a lot worse. 

“I didn’t…get your name,” Frank said as he was no less than forced to back out of the way Gerard’s brother pushed inside, his leather-clad shoulder brushing against Frank’s. 

“Mikey.”

“Oh,” Frank said, looking the man over and trying to see if he was armed in some way. The only thing Frank could see was the six-pack of beer in his hand. 

“Where the hell is my brother?” Mikey asked, looking around the room as Frank shut the front door. He didn’t sound irritable. More than anything, it sounded as if he were asking ‘where’s the party’ instead.

“Um—he’s in the bedroom.”

“And that’s…?” Mikey turned to look at Frank and finally pulled off his sunglasses. He folded the stems and then hooked one into the collar of his yellow shirt. Frank expected his eyes to be glazed over or hazy from drugs, but instead they were bright—almost playful and friendly. 

“It’s this way,” Frank said, guiding Mikey into his bedroom. He turned the light on but Gerard still made no noise, telling Frank that he’d passed back out. “He’s asleep,” Frank said, looking from Gerard to Mikey. The other man made him so nervous and he wanted Gerard to wake up so he didn’t have to be in the house alone with him. 

“Oh…yeah, I’d say you’re right,” Mikey said, going to the side of the bed that Gerard was facing. He looked down at Gerard for a long time and then proceeded to kick the bed frame over and over until his brother jolted away and sat up on his knees.

“What?—What the hell is happening?”

“Morning,” Mikey said. Gerard stared at him in shock, his face flushed as he panted heavily. The pain from moving his body so quickly showed itself too as he started shaking and slowly laid back down on the bed. 

“Why do you have beer?” Gerard asked, moaning in pain. He didn’t bother asking why his brother had kicked Frank’s bed—as if damaging someone else’s personal property was no big deal at all.

“I don’t know. I went to the gas station to buy a pack of smokes and then I left with this—still didn’t get any smokes though.”

“Did you at least _pay_ for it?” Gerard asked.

“No,” Mikey said, his tone already imply the ‘why would I?’ “I used to work at that shithole. I deserve a freebie.”

“Ugh—no you don’t…”

“Did you call me here to lecture me or are we gonna drink?”

“He can’t drink,” Frank said, unwilling to give the two their space. He was afraid Mikey would rifle through his drawers and steal everything of value. Gerard would probably just lie there and watch, and not bother to tell Frank a word about it. “He’s on too much medication.”

“That never stopped him before,” Mikey said, smiling—not even smirking. Just smiling as if someone had told him a joke. Then he turned back to his brother. “You’re turning into a pussy.”

“Shut up,” Gerard groaned. 

“Fine.” Mikey sat down on the bed near Gerard’s ankles and set his six pack on the mattress beside him. He started unlacing his boots, looking over his shoulder at Frank and giving him a strange look and a thumbs up before taking off his shoes and pulling his feet onto the bed. He sat with his legs crossed and then grabbed one of the beers. “You want one?” He asked, looking at Frank.

“No.”

“Fine. More for me.” Once Mikey turned back toward his brother, he acted as though Frank no longer even existed. “So…How’d you end up in this dump?”

“Hey,” Frank snapped. Yeah, his house wasn’t half as nice as Craig’s fucking mansion, but at least he _had_ a house unlike Mikey. 

“Mikey, don’t be rude.”

“Shut up. You know I’m just dicking around.” Then he added in a chagrined mutter: “And compared to Craig’s place…shit, even Manhattan looks like shit compared to that. Guy lives in a fuckin’ palace.”

“Yeah, it’s a real gilded cage,” Gerard muttered.

“So—what did he do this time?” Mikey asked, taking a swig of beer from the bottle. 

Gerard let out a heavy sigh and then confessed, not leaving out any detail of the night he’d ended up at the Jailer’s Den or how his relationship had turned from strained and controlling to an absolute living hell. 

“Are you serious right now?” Mikey asked, sounding dumbfounded and angry. His hand was clenched around his beer bottle so hard his knuckles were turning white. Frank expected the bottle to shatter, and maybe Mikey feared it as well because he finished the beer off as quickly as he could and then set the bottle back into its place in the six pack. “On the phone you said you were waiting for him to come home! You’re not fucking going back to him! Are you crazy? He’ll _kill_ you!”

“He’s not going to kill me,” Gerard said. 

“You’re so fucking pathetic. He beat you up and _literally_ left you for dead, and you _still_ want to go back to him?”

“I don’t _want_ to, I _have_ to. What choice do I have? There’s nowhere else for me to go. You don’t have a place and I don’t have any money…”

“Go live with Mom and Dad. I’m sure they’re around here somewhere. You’re not going back to Craig. Fuck you if you think you’re going back to Craig.” Mikey grabbed another bottle of beer and cracked it open with the bottle opener on his key ring, letting the tin cap fly off onto Frank’s bedroom floor with the other. 

“If I live with them…I’ll be back on the pills in no time.”

“So get back on the pills. If they make you happy, what does it matter?”

“Because I don’t want to _die,_ Mikey! Jesus Christ. Don’t you want to do more with your life than fucking chase your next high?”

“Don’t start with that,” Mikey said, sighing heavily. “You act all high and mighty but you’re no better than me. So what if all your drugs are prescriptions—you’re still getting high.”

“I went to rehab! I got _off_ the pills!”

“Whatever. If you weren’t on _something_ you would’ve left Craig after rehab—”

“And gone _where?_ Ugh—you’re not _listening_ to me!”

“No—you’re just being crazy and hormonal.”

“Hormonal!? Are you fucking kidding me?”

Frank sighed and leaned against the doorframe of his bedroom. So far, Mikey seemed harmless and Frank was tempted to go back to his living room to sit down. He wasn’t keen on listening to the two brothers bicker and go around in circles.

“Look, all I’m saying is you can’t make up your mind on shit—like a woman…who happens to be hormonal.”

“Mikey, I’m fucking _trapped._ ”

“You’re _always_ trapped. You like being trapped. Isn’t that your guys’ thing?”

Gerard groaned but didn’t really give an answer. 

“I don’t know, man. You’re just pissing me off,” Mikey said before taking another long drink. “You’re my brother, I love you, but you’re dumb. If you don’t want to be with Craig and he’s out of town, raid his fucking house, sell what you can, and buy your own fucking place.”

“He would _kill_ me, Mikey.”

“How? How the fuck would he find you?”

“The things in his house are his—not mine. If I pawned it off he’d have me arrested.”

“So make it look like a fuckin’ break in and sell the shit in the city. No one who runs a pawn shop in the city is going to admit to buying anything that’s stolen.”

“It’s not that easy…”

“Sure it is. Get me a fuckin’ car and I’ll do it. I’ll _gladly_ do it!” Mikey then whipped around and focus his eyes on Frank. “Hey, lend me your car.”

“Fuck no,” Frank said. When Mikey’s facial expression resembled nothing of anger or annoyance, it began to sink in that maybe he wasn’t as harmful as Frank had believed. He was a drug dealer, sure, and a convicted felon, but he didn’t seem like the type to harm someone who hadn’t done him any wrong. It was too soon to know for sure, but Frank no longer felt he was going to be stabbed for refusing to give Mikey whatever he asked for.

“Fine—you can be the getaway driver.”

“I’m not stealing from that psycho. My fingerprints are already all over that place.”

“Why?” Mikey asked, then, turning to Gerard, added, “What the hell was he doing at Craig’s? I thought you said they _weren’t_ friends?”

“They’re _not._ He went to get my meds.”

“Whatever.”

“Don’t ‘whatever’ me. You don’t get Craig—”

“Blah, blah, blah. I don’t even know what you want to hear from me. You called me over here to help you, but if you don’t want to take my advice then I should just fuckin’ leave. All you do is tell me things about Craig that piss me off and get me worked up, then you tell me not to act on it and—goddamn. You know I don’t have that much self-control. If I did, I’d still have my fuckin’ apartment!”

He had a point, Frank admitted to himself. Every time Gerard spoke of Craig it was as if he condemned him and then professed his need for him in the same breath. He wanted away from Craig—he didn’t want to leave Craig. He hated what Craig put him through—he wanted what Craig did to him.

“I get that you’ve been with him for like forty-thousand-fucking years, but Jesus Christ! Can you even _move_ right now?”

“I can get up…”

“Oh, you can get up,” Mikey said, mockery in his tone. 

“Mikey—”

“Did Craig, or did Craig _not_ let some strangers beat the everlasting shit out of you?”

“Mikey.”

_“Did he or did he not!?”_

“Ugh—yes! Yes, okay? Yes, he did.”

“Okay, good. We’re finally fucking getting somewhere.”

Gerard groaned and rolled onto his side, propping his head up on his hand, his elbow bent and resting against the pillow. 

“And did Craig, or did Craig _not_ ditch you in a motherfucking bathroom stall?” 

“Yes…”

“And did he or did he not, leave the key for fucking _anybody_ to find?”

“Mikey—”

“In a _bar!_ Full of people who just beat the _fuck_ out of you!?”

“Yes! Okay—I get it.”

“He doesn’t give a fuck about you. You’re just some fucking toy. Do you really want to stay and be treated like that?”

“No…but it’s not like I can get anybody better.”

“Dude, a fucking drug lord would treat you better than Craig. You can’t tell me you can’t find some other guy in one of your freaky fetish clubs who would take you home.”

“I’ve never tried it. Craig would _kill_ me if he caught me talking to somebody else.”

“Well you’re fucking dumping Craig so it doesn’t matter. Get your shit—get some of his shit—and move out.”

“And move _where!?_ That’s the thing with you, Mikey! You don’t think anything through! So I move out—then where the hell am I supposed to go!? I’m not _robbing_ Craig and I don’t have any money! I can’t even fucking walk! Where the hell am I supposed to go!?”

“I don’t know! Aren’t you _his_ new boytoy?”

“Who?—Frank!? No! Hell no!”

“Then why the fuck are you here?”

“Oh my god—I’ve told you! He’s the one who found the goddamned key. Don’t you listen?”

“So stay with him—he doesn’t care.”

“I don’t?” Frank asked.

“Frank, I’m sorry—he’s fucking crazy,” Gerard said, looking at Frank and scowling—unable to look genuine even when he was apologizing. 

“I don’t know what you want me to tell you,” Mikey said. “I live on girl’s couches and pray to god their boyfriends don’t come home and shoot me in my sleep.”

“Well whose fault is that?” Gerard grumbled.

“Whose fault is it that you can’t walk right now? Whose fault is it you don’t have a job? Or that you don’t have any friends? It’s not _Craig’s_ fault. You’re the one who stayed. I told you back when we were kids to stay the fuck away from him but _no!_ You had to go cuddle up with him in the confessional and come out with jizz on your face—”

“Mikey!”

“—and then begged me to tell Mom ‘noo, it was just _donut_ glaze. Father Dinapoli had _donuts_ in his study and he gave some to us.’” He then turned to Frank. “Fuckin’ donuts, Fred.”

“Frank.”

“Whatever,” Mikey said, turning back to Gerard whose face had turned red with humiliation. Frank actually found himself feeling bad for Gerard. He’d been manipulated and abused by some older man when he was young and vulnerable. Once the secret got out, he was probably shunned by everyone he knew, giving him no one to turn to except Craig—Craig who now possessed him heart and soul. And there sat Mikey, belittling him over the mistake he’d made a kid—a mistake he couldn’t possibly have known at the time would ruin his entire life. 

“Gerard?” Frank said, sighing heavily and regretting already what he was about to say. 

“What!?” Gerard snapped, glaring at Frank through his burning shame. 

“If you need a place to stay, you can…you can stay here. We can go tomorrow and get your things from Craig’s house and…if there’s any money get that too because I can’t afford food for both of us.”

“Frank, you don’t want to do that,” Gerard said, his face going from bright red to pale in a matter of seconds. It made Frank’s breath catch in his throat. Something wasn’t right.

“See, Gerard? There you go again. Someone offers to help you and you go back to Craig for no fucking reason. But this time, I’m not going to let you. Frank—thank you. I’ll help get the shit from Father Fucked-up’s house.”

“Mikey, don’t—”

“Shut up. Someone’s offering to help you. Say thanks and shut your mouth.”

Gerard sighed and laid back down on his face. He said something muffled by the pillows, and whatever it was, the last thing it sounded like was “thanks.”

“You got a bathroom?” Mikey asked, looking at Frank as he chugged the last bit of the beer in his second bottle.

“Yeah, it’s just around the corner,” Frank said.

Mikey placed his empty bottle back into the six pack and stood up, leaving the room and closing the door behind him. 

“Gerard?” Frank asked, coming over to the side of the bed. He stooped down to pick up the bottle caps Mikey had left on the floor and put them into the bedside trash. 

“What?”

“Is there a reason you don’t want me to get the rest of your things from Craig’s house?”

“No,” Gerard said, his face still buried in the pillow.

“What?”

Gerard turned his face out of the cotton and fabric and groaned. 

“No. Craig’s just not going to like having you in his house again without permission.”

“How’s he gonna know?”

“The cameras…”

“He has fucking cameras in there!? Why the fuck didn’t you say that before I went there the first time?” Before he wandered around looking at things he had no reason to be looking at, Frank meant.

“Because I was in pain maybe. I don’t know. I try not to think about it,” Gerard mumbled.

“Anything _else_ I should know about? Like maybe a guard dog he’s has on the property or an alarm system he has set up?”

“The alarm code is four-four-five-nine. He’ll get a notification when you open the door. He’s gonna know you’re there.”

“Is he going to call the cops on me and have me fucking arrested if I go in there?”

“I don’t know…maybe.”

“Well shit… That changes things.”

“He probably won’t—”

“Then why would your first reaction be to tell me I don’t want to do it? If you didn’t think something bad would happen?”

“I don’t know…”

At that moment, Mikey came back into the room and immediately went for another one of the beers, opening it and letting the cap fall off onto the floor. Frank looked up and made eye contact with him, glaring and then flicking his eyes down to the cap on the floor.

Mikey hummed and then leaned down and picked it up. Without any additional prompting, he tossed it into the trash can and sat down on the bed.

“So, since it’s like twelve-thirty, I don’t have time to get back to Chelsea’s so I’m sleeping on the couch.”

Frank stammered a moment, offended and irritated. Where was he supposed to sleep with Mikey on his couch and Gerard in his bed!?

“You can sleep in here,” Frank snapped. 

“I’m not sharing a bed with this asshole. We haven’t had to share a bed since we were like…ten.”

“Well I’m not sleeping with him and if you’re on my couch there’s nowhere for me to sleep in my own goddamned house. So you’re either sleeping in here or you’re out.”

“Fine. Jeez. I’ll sleep in here. You got any spare nightclothes? I kind of need a shower and I doubt you want these in your bed,” Mikey said, gesturing to his outfit. 

Frank rolled his eyes and then pulled out a pair of pajama pants from his dresser. 

“Mikey, are these all the clothes you have?” Gerard asked, sounding disappointed.

“Nah. I got a duffle bag at Chelsea’s. Her boyfriend’s in the Marines and won’t be back until sometime next year.”

“You need to stop getting with girls who have boyfriends—specifically boyfriends who are trained to fucking kill people, Mikey!” Gerard grumbled.

“Yeah, well you need to stop spreading your legs for psychopaths. And we both know if you stick with Craig you’ll get shot long before I ever will.”

Mikey finished his third beer in record time and then grabbed up the pajama pants and a t-shirt Frank handed him. He returned to the bathroom and turned on the water, struggling for a moment before figuring out how to work the shower. 

“Gerard, I want you to be straight with me, alright?” Frank said, grabbing the six pack of beer and holding it. He planned to put it in the fridge before Mikey came back to the room, not wanting the glass bottles to be used against him as a weapon or end up smashed in his bed. 

“Okay,” Gerard said, sounding a bit confused.

“If I go to Craig’s house tomorrow and I risk getting arrested for breaking in, are you just going to go back to him the day he gets home or are you actually going to try to get free?”

“I don’t want to stay with him… It’s like I told Mikey. I have nowhere else to go.”

“So if I get your stuff and _don’t_ get arrested, are you going to stay here when Craig comes looking for you?”

“I don’t know.” He sounded like a little kid, unable or unwilling to give an honest answer. 

“That’s not a real answer.”

“If the cops show up, call me. I have partial ownership of the house so…I can have people go in if I want.”

That was at least slightly reassuring, but Frank still had mixed emotions about the whole thing. If he did this, there was no going back—unless Gerard decided to _go_ back. But he guessed he’d already jumped in with both feet when he took Gerard home with him from the hospital. Maybe even before then. Hell, he’d signed up for this madness the moment he’d opened that bathroom stall and found Gerard. He hadn’t had a fucking say in any of it at all. 

To Craig, Frank was just his new toy, and going to his house to get Gerard’s things was probably an anticipated movement in his fucked up game.


	11. Chapter 11

_Chapter 11_

Frank had been woken up multiple times through the night by Mikey getting up to use the bathroom, and then to get a drink, then to help Gerard go to the bathroom and yet again to get _Gerard_ a drink. Around six in the morning Mikey came into the living room to take a phone call, then at nine Mikey came out of the bedroom to make coffee. He broke a cup in the sink, then took two cups of coffee into the bedroom. Frank gave up sleeping after that and laid on the couch glaring at his ceiling. 

Mikey and Gerard started arguing, Mikey yelled something, Gerard cried something…someone got slapped. 

That was when Frank decided to get up and intervene before the argument got any worse and someone—Gerard—ended up hurt. 

He knocked on the door and Mikey and immediately came out, shouting at Gerard that he was being stupid and needed to think before opened his mouth. Frank watched as Mikey went into the kitchen and started pouring himself another cup of coffee from the pot that had gone cold long ago. When he realized Mikey was content to stand by the sink and stare out the kitchen window, Frank ducked into the room to check on Gerard.

“Everything okay?”

“Yeah—I’m fuckin’ great,” Gerard muttered, his voice choked. “Not in fucking pain at all.”

“I’ll go get you a pill, alright?”

“Why? So you can call me an addict to like that fucking hypocrite?”

“Do you want the pill or not?” Frank asked, unwilling to indulge Gerard’s whining. 

“Yes…”

So Frank went into the kitchen to retrieve the pill bottle, passing a sideways glance to Mikey as he filled a glass of water in the sink. 

“Do you really need to get him started this early in the morning?” Frank asked.

“He’s just so sensitive. All I asked was if he had any pain pills left and he starts bitching. I don’t know his fuckin’ life. I don’t even know when all this shit happened. It was an honest fuckin’ question.”

“He’s your brother. You should know how he gets.”

“Yeah, yeah. And who are you? His new mommy? He can walk. If he wants a pill make him get it himself.”

“He can _barely_ walk. If you’re around later when I change the bandages maybe then you’ll get it.”

“I’m telling you,” Mikey said, drawing out his words into a sing-song tone. “If you spoil him now, he’s never gonna stop.”

“You don’t get how much pain he’s in.”

“You don’t get _Gerard,_ ” Mikey said, smirking at him as if he’d told a joke. “When we were kids, he broke his own arm so our mom would pay attention to him.”

“Well he didn’t do _this_ to himself.” Frank shook his head and took the pill and glass of water to Gerard. Immediately, Gerard perked up and took a drink from the glass before popping the pill into his mouth and swallowing it as well. 

“Thanks.”

“You know your brother thinks you did this for attention?” Frank asked, starting to wonder if there was any truth to the statement. He remembered how Gerard had pleaded for Frank sleep next to him before. Now he wondered if it was because the physical pain or something else. 

“Yeah, I definitely told Craig I wanted beat half to death before he went away. That’s exactly how I want my relationship to be.” He sniffled as he said it and then finished the glass of water. “Mikey just…doesn’t get me, you know? I… Yeah, I’ve fucked up a lot but I didn’t want _this._ I don’t even _know_ you and I’m stuck here if I don’t want to _die._ ”

“Well, hopefully once you’re better you won’t go back to Craig.”

“Where else am I gonna go? I don’t want to be with him, but I have no one. Mikey doesn’t even have a fucking car anymore!” Gerard groaned and laid back down on his stomach. “I don’t understand how this is happening. Craig used to be so good to me… Then it just _changed_ and it’s like he hates me.”

“Well… Shit, I don’t know what to say to you. I didn’t ask for this, you didn’t ask for this, but this is where we are. You know? Mikey and I are going to go get your things so you don’t _have_ to stay with Craig anymore.” Frank slowly sat down on the edge of the bed, showing Gerard that he was there to listen if he wanted to talk.

“But I can’t stay here forever,” Gerard whined. “This wasn’t supposed to be how it was going to happen.”

“How what was going to happen? Your life?”

“No,” Gerard cried before turning his face into the pillow. He said something, but Frank couldn’t understand him. 

“Gerard, I can’t even hear you right now. What are you saying?”

Gerard let out a whimper and rolled onto his side, looking up at Frank and sniffing. Even though he’d taken a pill, his system was still free of the drugs and Frank felt like it was the first time he was actually seeing him—not just looking at him through a hazy filter. It wouldn’t last long, but he was willing to listen if Gerard could actually say something true without sarcasm and his bad attitude. 

“When he said we were going to the bar and told me what he had planned I…I thought it would be fun. He just wouldn’t stop.”

“What did he say was going to happen?”

“He said we were going to play with the others—and I’m fine with that. I like other people. It’s fun for me, but…he promised that if I got hurt we’d stop.”

“Yeah, that didn’t happen,” Frank said after Gerard trailed off.

“He told me he was going to give me away. I thought his friend would be there. Sometimes he leave me with this other guy—Steven. He leaves me with him when he goes out, just…just to mess around. I thought that was what he meant, but Steven wasn’t there. It wasn’t a game anymore, was it?”

“It was some kind of game,” Frank mumbled. He didn’t understand how someone could do this kind of thing—even to a person with an attitude as bad as Gerard’s. Yes, he was kind of an asshole and he had more sass than anyone Frank had ever met in his life, but he didn’t deserve to be treated as if he were disposable. 

Gerard let out a heartbreaking sob and reached out a hand, letting his knuckles brush against Frank’s knee. 

“I don’t know how it got this bad… There was just so much happening and sometimes I just felt I _didn’t_ have a say, and—God, how is this happening? This _isn’t_ my life.”

Frank sighed and put his hand on Gerard’s shoulder, rubbing it gently while the other man cried. 

“It _is_ your life though. But it doesn’t have to be this way anymore. If you go back to him, he could do this again. You need to get out and stay away. I know you feel like you don’t have a choice, but you do.”

“I just don’t understand. He _loved_ me. He _always_ loved me. Then he did _this!_ He did _this_ to me! Why!?”

“I don’t know,” Frank answered.

“Why!?—Because I don’t want to be _high_ anymore? Because I can’t get _hard_ for him? How am I supposed to be attracted to someone who _scares_ me?” Gerard started crying so hard he began to choke and Frank went from rubbing his shoulder to stroking his entire arm, trying to think of anything he could do to offer comfort. “I want this to be a nightmare. I just want it to be how it was. He used to _love_ me.”

“You can do a lot better than him, Gerard. I’m going to let you stay here ‘til you’re back on your feet. I’ll need some kind of money, but I’m sure Craig has some lying around.”

“If you take money from Craig, he’ll call the cops on you,” Gerard cried. “Don’t take money from him. I don’t want you to go away, too.”

“Do you have any money?” Frank asked, knowing the answer would be no.

“In my desk in my studio,” Gerard said, starting to calm down—possibly as the pill took effect. “There’s an envelope taped under the third drawer.”

“And there’s money in it?”

Gerard nodded and wiped his face on the pillow. “He leaves a lot lying around and keeps some in a pot in the kitchen so…when it’s dark at night and the cameras can’t see I take some. He doesn’t know.”

“How much do you have?”

“I don’t know,” Gerard whispered. “Can you get my sketch books? If you go today? I really want them…”

“I’m going to get whatever looks like it’s yours.”

“If you take something of Craig’s—”

“Then I’ll take it back.”

Gerard didn’t look soothed, but the clarity had slipped away from his eyes and Frank doubted anything would really reach him at that point. 

“What about this, Gerard. I’ll leave my phone here and I’ll have Mikey take pictures of some things and send them to you. And if you see I’m going to take something that isn’t yours, you can tell me. Okay?”

“Yeah… I think that’ll work.”

“I’m going to get you some more water and let you rest, okay?”

“Do I have to change my bandages today?”

“Yeah, but I’ll do it when I get back from Craig’s.”

A tear slid down Gerard’s cheek at the prospect but he didn’t protest. 

( ) ( ) ( )

“You know what?”

“What?” Frank snapped.

From the moment Mikey had gotten into his car, he had yet to shut _up_ and that irritating grin had been on his face since that morning. Frank didn’t know what humored him so much—whether it was an idea or a drug he’d taken when Frank wasn’t watching—but it was irritating as hell.

“I have a car.”

“You have a car?”

“Yup. Got it hidden so the cops can’t take it.”

“Awesome,” Frank said, staring at the road and trying to remember how to get to Craig’s house. He’d given Mikey the sheet with the directions on it—unable to use the gps on his phone since he only had Mikey’s cell with him and his phone could hardly even take photos.

“I don’t tell Gerard that though.”

“Why not?” Frank asked, feigning interest. 

“I don’t know. I don’t want him to take it either.”

“He can’t even _sit._ How would he steal your car?”

“I don’t know…”

“You’re paranoid because you’re high,” Frank said.

“No—I’m paranoid because I’m _not_ high.”

“Just tell me you don’t have drugs in my car right now.”

“Nah. I left them in your bathroom.”

“Are you fucking kidding me!? You brought drugs to my house?” Frank wanted to slam on the breaks and kick him out, not caring if he was in the middle of a shitty neighborhood. Maybe Mikey would feel right at home there with the gang members. 

“Relax, I’m just fuckin’ with you. I sold what I had last night on my way over.”

“You have a messed up sense of humor,” Frank grumbled. 

“Yeah—so does my brother.”

“You’re both weird.”

“You’re the one who took him in.”

“What choice did I have?”

“Leave him in the hospital.”

“Craig checked him out. I couldn’t just leave him there.”

“You just want in his pants.”

“That’s the last thing I want,” Frank snapped. “The absolute, last thing in the world that I want. You know what diseases he could have?”

“Yeah—I can imagine. I think he’s had, like, syphilis twice now or something. But that was last year when he told me. I don’t get it.”

“Don’t get what?”

“Craig. He takes him to these clubs and lets strangers fuck him, right? Then he ignores him for a month, then makes him get tested, then gets mad when he catches something.”

“I feel like a lot of weird shit happens between him and Craig and it’s gonna take a fuckin’ novel for me to figure it out.”

“Nah.”

“No?”

“Craig is fucked up, Gerard is fucked up, they have a fucked up relationship. There you go.”

Frank rolled his eyes and didn’t answer. He didn’t have to. Mikey would just keep talking anyway. He struck Frank as the type of person who would call and leave a voicemail that was a conversation in and of itself—he didn’t need anyone to answer him to keep talking. 

“Our dad beat the hell out of him when he found out he slept with our priest. He didn’t tell anybody… Mom didn’t do anything. I was a kid—obviously I didn’t do anything about it. Word got around anyway that Father Fucked-Up was sleeping with a guy and he had to quit…no one ever realized it was a kid he was sleeping with.” Mikey clicked his tongue and looked down at his lap. “Gerard dropped out of school and ran off to be with Craig when he was sixteen. Mom and Dad never even said a word about it. It was like he didn’t exist anymore.”

“That had to be hard.”

“That’s when I started smoking. I was fourteen probably…maybe younger. It didn’t matter anymore.”

“Gerard told me once you guys had a pact not to be like your parents.”

“Yeah. Dad’s a dealer—mom’s a crackwhore. I’m a dealer…and we both know what Gerard is. So much for that pact, huh?” For once, Mikey wasn’t smiling.

“You can do more with your life, you know?”

“Like what? Get a shitty job at the docks so I can buy a shitty apartment and get a shitty girlfriend who cheats on me with my best friends?—All _three_ of my best friends? Because that’s what happened the last time I tried to get sober.”

“So pick a better girlfriend.”

“Whose going to date an ex drug dealer felon?”

“Well don’t bring it up on your first date.”

“And where do you meet people? At freaky sex clubs or on your gross websites?”

“I met my last partner at a _normal_ bar, thank you.”

“And where is he?”

“He left.”

“Did he sleep with all three of your best friends?”

“No—because all my friends aren’t drug dealers.”

He expected Mikey to get pissed off, but instead the man started to laugh. 

“Yeah—can’t date an ex-prostitute and not expect her to sleep with your friends for drugs…” His laugh started to sound a little sad though and Frank felt bad for him. It was obvious that the infidelity bothered him. 

“Don’t you sleep with girls whose boyfriends are out of town or something?”

“Yup. Rather cheat with than get cheated on, you know what I mean?”

“I don’t cheat on people, but I guess I get it.”

“So where did your partner go?” 

“He just left!” Frank snapped.

“Why?” Mikey asked, his tone playful. He knew it upset Frank to talk about it and that was why he kept pushing. Frank had hurt his feelings now it was Mikey’s turn to do the same.

“Because I fucked up, okay? We were messing around, I got carried away, and I fucked up. By the time I realized he wasn’t into the scene anymore…it was too late. He left that night and we never talked again. Oh—except for the restraining order after I tried to see him at work. Can’t forget that.”

“Ouch. What did you do?”

“I’m not gonna get into it with you, so would you back the fuck off?”

“Fine. Jeez. Are we almost there?”

“Yes.”

“Are we there _yet?_ ” Mikey asked, looking at Frank until Frank turned to look at him. As soon as eye contact was made—or as close to eye contact as they could get with the dark shades over Mikey’s eyes—Mikey burst into laughter and looked away. “I’m just fuckin’ with you. I know where Craig lives. In the fuckin’ gilded palace, right? Same one? All the marble and shit?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t pay attention the first time I was there, but…you’re probably going to want to stay downstairs,” Frank said, thinking of the awful portrait that hung on the wall at the top of the staircase. 

“Is that where all the freaky shit is?”

“Yeah—that and the basement.”

“Okay, then yeah. I’ll stay downstairs. Don’t need any more reasons to want to punch Craig in the fuckin’ mouth.”

( ) ( ) ( )

As Gerard had predicted, the home alarm system started blaring as soon as Frank unlocked the door. He checked Mikey’s phone for the code and punched in the numbers. For a moment he thought the code had been changed, but then the beeping stopped and Frank closed the door. 

“It stinks in here,” Mikey said, crinkling his nose even though the house smelled like nothing but air freshener. 

“I’m gonna go upstairs and get his books and stuff,” Frank said, shifting the duffle bag he had over his shoulder. 

“I’m going to go look for one of his cameras and tell him what the fuck I think of him.”

“Knock yourself out,” Frank mumbled, trying to ignore all the happy-couple photographs he walked past as he went to the staircase. He refused to look up at the hideous photograph at the top of the steps, not wanting to see anymore of Gerard’s face contorted with pain and fear. He got enough of that at home. 

When he got into Gerard’s studio he immediately opened the third drawer of his desk and felt around on the underside for the envelope which was taped there. It was thick and when Frank opened it, it was stuffed full with twenties, fifties, and hundreds. There was well over a thousand dollars—maybe even over four or five thousand—and Frank couldn’t fathom how Craig didn’t notice it missing. There were no small bills in the envelope at all. Frank put the envelope into the duffle bag and then started rifling through the contents of the desk drawers. 

It was full of notebooks and sketch books, each one seeming to have a different theme though Frank didn’t stare for too long. Some of the notebooks were personal diaries, others were short stories—one was labeled “Star Wars Notes,” whatever that meant—and the sketchpads were from another dimension all together. Some were full of terrible drawings, like something little kids would do. Then there were books with absolutely perfect proportions and full figure drawings. Some looked like comic book characters, others looked _real,_ almost like black and white photos. The second drawer of the desk was full of loose sheets of paper. He didn’t know if Gerard would want anything from it but began to doubt it as he looked at the sketches shoved into the drawer.

One had two pages stapled to it, four self-portraits divided between the two pages. The first set of portraits was a healthy and normal looking various of Gerard, just like he looked now, then the next showed him with scars on his face, missing patches of hair. The normal portrait said “What I See” the second “What Craig Sees.” The second page was nearly a mirror image of the first, only the portraits had switched sides and the one with scars and pockmarks, missing hair and apparently teeth read “What I See.” The normal one read “What Craig Sees.”

Frank really doubted Gerard would want to see that.

He finished clearing out the desk, taking some art supplies and the Bible he had in his top drawer—not sure if Gerard would want it or not. He went into the bedroom next and emptied the closet and dresser of anything that looked like it belonged to Gerard. Frank kept expecting to find something gross or sexual buried in the drawers of the large dresser, but there was nothing. He began to doubt that the two ever even had sex in his room. Perhaps they only ever had scenes in the basement torture chamber and the bedroom existed only for sleep. 

After collecting all of the clothes he could find, Frank passed one last look at the happy-couple portrait over Gerard and Craig’s bed—the one of Gerard kissing Craig on the cheek and Craig smiling for the camera. Even in that photo his smile looked crooked—deranged. Gerard looked happy though. Genuinely happy even though he had to know of the pain that awaited him later in the night. 

Frank started back down the stairs and found Mikey standing in the kitchen drinking liquor straight from the bottle. He had his glasses up and placed on the bill of his hat, his eyes downcast and haunted.

“You okay?”

“Fuckin’ fifteen-year-old scotch, man.”

“Yeah… Did you find anything?”

“I found his wallet,” Mikey said, pulling a bright pink wallet out of his back pocket. “It was in that drawer,” he added, pointing at the drawer closest to the oven. 

“Anything else in there?”

“Bills and shit. You want some?” Mikey took the bottle away from his mouth and tipped it toward Frank who was still standing across the room from him.

“I’m driving.”

“Right. I’ll take it with us.”

“Don’t take his liquor. We’re just getting Gerard’s things.”

“I deserve this scotch, okay? I went in their living room. There’s pictures of that asshole in there. I deserve a drink.”

“Do what you want,” Frank said, shaking his head and leaving the kitchen. He wandered through the house, trying to ignore the unending number of happy-couple photographs. There was nothing else in this house that belonged to Gerard, Frank realized. There were no books besides bibles and the films on the shelves were all religion themed—not even a tape of _Star Wars_ anywhere to be found. 

Frank was about to leave when Mikey’s phone got a text. He glanced at the screen and saw it was from Gerard.

“Can you get my collar? ): ”

Frank wanted to ask him why—but he knew why and that made him sick to his stomach because it meant he had to go downstairs to get it, downstairs into the dungeon. 

“Do you really need that?” Frank texted him back.

Within seconds Gerard responded: “Please ): ”

Frank didn’t answer, but forced himself to near the basement door. As soon as he opened it, he heard Mikey slam the liquor bottle down and come running.

“What the hell are you doing?”

“Gerard wants me to get him something.”

“Get him what? His favorite paddle?”

“His _collar._ ”

“I’m sorry—his what?”

“Don’t worry about. I’m just going to grab it and then we can go. Why don’t you raid his liquor cabinet some more?”

“Maybe I fuckin’ will,” Mikey said, taking his sunglasses and dropping them back over his eyes. He left the room and Frank started down the basement stairs after clipping on the light. 

He did his best not to look at the collage of disturbing photographs on the wall, but it was hard when he was searching for one bit of leather in a room full of the stuff. There was a chest full of drawers—and the drawers full of implements and toys Frank didn’t want to see. 

He almost had to text Gerard that he was sorry, but he couldn’t find it. Then he spotted the ring of leather lying on the floor underneath one of the tables. It was heavier than he expected, black and studded with silver rivets, but with pink threads instead of black. It made Frank think of the pink wallet Mikey had found.

So Gerard liked pink…

Frank kept his eyes on the collar as he walked back up the stairs and turned off the light. Before he entered back into the kitchen where Mikey was clinking alcohol bottles, Frank put the collar into his duffle bag. When he stepped back into the kitchen, Mikey had apparently taken a swig from every bottle and was spitting into the wine. 

“Feel better now?” Frank asked.

“I shouldn’t have pissed before we came.”

“Come on. Put that shit away.”

“I covered up the camera so he can’t see me doing it,” Mikey said before bursting into laughter. “He either has to pour out all his booze or drink my fuckin’ spit!” 

“Good job,” Frank said, slapping Mikey on the shoulder as he passed him. “Let’s put this away and get back before your brother does something stupid.”

“I thought you took his pills away.”

“I did,” Frank said, taking the bottle of wine out of Mikey’s hand before he could spit in it a third time. 

“Then what’s he gonna do?” Mikey started capping and corking the bottles, careful to keep the right stoppers on the right bottles. For a drunk, he was very good at focusing on the little details. He carefully put all the bottles back on the rack and in their respective places and then crossed back over to the camera in the corner. He stepped up onto the counter to reach it and peeled a sticky note off the small lens. “Don’t want you to miss out on the show if I come back,” Mikey said, even though it was doubtful the camera had a microphone. “You’re lucky I don’t have time to rub my dick on all your cups, asshole.”

“Come on. Get down before you fall down,” Frank said. Dealing with Mikey was like dealing with a little kid, but in some ways it was amusing. After spending so many days only really seeing and speaking with Gerard who was either bitter or crying, the immature sense of humor was a relief. When Mikey tried to jump off the counter, he slipped and fell to his knees on the floor. 

After cursing from the pain and he slumped over and curled up, laughing at his own misfortune. 

“Did you fuckin’ see that?” He asked, laughing hard.

“Yeah. You fell down.”

“I fuckin’ broke my leg.”

“No you didn’t. Get up,” Frank said, unable to keep from laughing himself. He had to help pull Mikey up by his arm and led him to the door, making sure that it was locked and key was tucked away before he left. Once Mikey was in the car, he leaned the seat way back—still cackling—and stayed that way for half of the ride home.


	12. Chapter 12

_Chapter 12_

Gerard was sleeping when Frank got back home. He had the blankets pulled over himself so only a swatch of his dark hair showed on the pillow, and there was a note beside him on the bed—written on a napkin from the kitchen—saying he didn’t want disturbed. Frank contemplated waking him up anyway, just to say they’d returned, but decided against it. 

Slowly, quietly, he unpacked the duffle bag he’d stuffed full of Gerard’s belongings back at Craig’s house. Mikey came into the bedroom for all of two minutes, but Frank immediately kicked him out when he realized that all the other man wanted was to wake Gerard up and instigate an argument with him. It was fun for Mikey, it seemed, pissing his older brother off. Writing a note saying Do Not Disturb just encouraged him to do the opposite. 

So, after Mikey declared that he would be going into the living room to take a nap, Frank began cleaning out room in one of his dresser drawers so Gerard could have his own space. If he was going to be staying for a while, he would need his own storage areas. It was a tight fit, but Frank was able to get two drawers for Gerard’s things and three for his own, then he moved over to the closet. He had some spare hangers, but not nearly enough for all the shirts he’d brought so some had to be folded and set on the shelf above the clothes rack. 

Frank picked out the sketch books and set them atop the end table next to Gerard’s head and, reluctantly, placed the black and pink-trimmed leather collar on top of them. Hopefully Gerard would be feeling alright when he woke up and saw it. Part of Frank’s mind screamed at him to put the collar away in the drawer and forget about it, let Gerard dig it out if or when he wanted to see it. 

Once everything was tucked away, Frank left the room—keeping the door open a crack so he could hear if Gerard made a sound—and then started fixing lunch for himself in the kitchen. Mikey was lying on the couch, either asleep or pretending he was, with his sunglasses and the bill of his hat tipped down to cover his eyes. When Frank started frying some tofu for himself on the skillet, Mikey huffed and then started snoring loudly, convincing Frank once and for all that the other man was actually asleep. 

Frank made extra food in case Gerard or Mikey woke up hungry, and wrapped them up in foil to keep them warm while he stood at his kitchen counter and ate. He wanted to sit and watch television, maybe watch the weather forecast or the news, but he didn’t want to wake Mikey and have the man start yacking at him again. Spending the morning with him had been more than enough.

About halfway through his meal, Frank heard the bed creak as Gerard shifted around and soon after the man staggered into view. He moved sleepily through the living area toward the kitchen, pausing by the couch to stare down at Mikey—not really glaring or scowling, but just looking as if he didn’t understand why he was there—and then made his way to Frank.

“I made extra. Are you hungry?” Frank asked, setting his plate aside and picking up the one wrapped in foil.

“What did you make?” Gerard asked, getting himself a glass of water. His body was shaking and Frank worried that he might drop the glass into the sink as he filled it due to how much his fingers were trembling. 

“Tofu and soy sauce, and some soybeans if you want them.”

“Soybeans?” Gerard said before bringing the glass of water to his lips and taking a long drink. When he pulled the glass away he started panting for air, and then immediately refilled the cup and drank it all in a few quick gulps. 

“Seasoned, not just plain,” Frank said.

“I’ll try them,” Gerard said, setting the glass down and taking the foil-wrapped dish from Frank. He set it down on the counter a couple feet away and waited for Frank to hand him a fork so he could start eating. 

“I made extra so your brother can have some if he wakes up anytime soon,” Frank said.

“Mikey won’t eat anything unless it’s deep-fried and bathed in grease,” Gerard muttered, spearing one of the soybeans and popping it into his mouth. “These are good.”

“Yeah?” Frank asked. Gerard was keeping his voice soft, sounding kind and polite—so unlike his usual self. 

“Frank?”

“Hm?” Frank picked his own plate back up off the counter and returned to eating, wanting to avoid awkwardly standing near the man staring as they spoke. 

“I…I just wanted to say thanks for…for getting my things. And—And for letting me stay here. Most guys… Well… Fuck. Most people would’ve just left me, either in the bathroom or at the hospital. And…and even if they didn’t, I don’t think anybody else would’ve let me stay in their house. I—I really…I really just appreciate it.”

Frank didn’t know what to say. He was afraid if he acknowledged it, it might make Gerard feel embarrassed and cause him to lash out—to turn his praise into a backhanded insult or something. 

“It’s fine,” Frank said, shrugging and staring down at his plate. “Just don’t, you know, rob me or try to murder me in my sleep and you can stay as long as you need.”

“I’m not going to kill you in your sleep,” Gerard muttered. Frank could sense him rolling his eyes, even though he didn’t look up to see. 

“I put your wallet in your dresser drawer—I gave you the top two drawers.”

“Really?” Gerard asked. When Frank looked up at him, his eyes were wide as if shocked, part of a soybean pod poking out the corner of his mouth.

“Yeah. I’ll have to get some more hangers so I can hang up your shirts in closet.”

“I don’t need hangers. I never hang up my clothes anyway… Father always—Craig, he always yelled at me for it. I just…throw them everywhere.”

“I’d like to keep a clean house, so I’m going to buy some more hangers.” 

“Maybe…maybe when I feel better I can help clean up,” Gerard said, almost as if speaking to himself. “Did I have enough money in my envelope? I haven’t checked it in a few months… Really, I kind of forgot about it.”

“Yeah—there’s definitely enough,” Frank said. “I’ll have to go grocery shopping soon. Maybe I’ll drag your brother along with me. Is there anything you like to eat that you’d want me to pick up?”

“Booze,” Gerard said, laughing a little as he stuffed more soybeans into his mouth. “Um… Shit, I don’t know. Craig always had me go buy things but I had a list I needed to follow. Fuck, if I forgot something it _wasn’t_ play when he took me downstairs. I forgot _mayonnaise_ once. He beat me _so hard_ I threw up. I threw up _everywhere._ ”

“I don’t eat mayonnaise,” Frank said, trying to get off the subject of throwing up as he ate his lunch. “They throw all the male chicks into a blender at the egg factories. _Alive._ ”

“What?—Why?”

“Because they only need hens at egg factories. If the hatchling’s a boy, it’s useless. So they throw it into a blender to kill it.”

“And that’s what mayonnaise is made of? Ground up chicks?” Gerard actually sounded baffled and repulsed. 

“No—Mayonnaise is made with eggs. Eggs that come from the egg factories. The egg factories throw live chicks into a blender. I don’t eat mayonnaise.”

“They really do that?” Gerard asked, looking at his plate as if it were covered in the stuff.

“Yeah. That’s why I’m vegetarian. I don’t want thrown in a blender—so I don’t support industries that throw living animals into a blender. I don’t care if they say it’s fast and painless.”

“It doesn’t sound painless to me,” Gerard mumbled. “Though I guess I would’ve rather been thrown in a blender than have this happen. If Craig hates me so much, why couldn’t he just kill me?” 

“Because he doesn’t hate you. He wants to control you. He hates not having complete control over you.”

“Then why not dump me and pick up someone else? Craig has money, you know? You’ve seen his house. He’s got lots of money. He could pick up any dumb bimbo he wants and torture them—pay them off with designer clothes cars like he used to do for me.”

“He used to buy you _cars?_ ”

“Well, _a_ car. He kept saying he was going to buy me another one—a better one. He’d bring me catalogues and take me to the dealership like twice a month. He showed me _sports_ cars and _muscle_ cars—pretty much every fancy car you can find. Then he got pissed off at me once and sold my car. I had to go to the grocery store on my bike…”

“When did he stop letting you out?” Frank asked.

“When I came back from rehab—well… Maybe before then. I don’t know. It’s a mess. My whole life is a fuckin’ mess.”

“Well, you’re going to get out of that and do something different. As long as you don’t go back with Craig, you can do whatever you want—you can _be_ whoever you want. Not who he wanted you to be.”

“I guess,” Gerard said, taking a bite of the tofu. He didn’t seem to like it, but kept eating anyway, making faces the whole time but trying to stifle them whenever he noticed Frank looking. 

“So, what do you eat? Tell me so I know what to get at the store,” Frank said, refocusing the subject.

“Shit…I don’t know. _Meat._ The product of evil slaughterhouses.”

“I can buy you meat, but you’re cooking it yourself. Just because I don’t doesn’t mean you can’t.”

“It’s your house. I can go without it for a couple weeks.”

“A couple weeks? You’re going to be here for _months._ ”

“Now, why do you have to say that?” Gerard asked, sighing in frustration. “I’m not living here for months on end. I’m not going to invade you like that.”

“It’s not an invasion. You’re paying me, remember? You’re just my roommate. You can’t start looking for work until you’re _completely_ better, and that’s going to take a few months.”

“Shit, I guess…”

“So what do you eat?”

“I don’t know…vegetables?”

They continued to bicker back and forth, Gerard refusing to list anything specific and Frank refusing to back down, until Mikey woke up and took Gerard’s plate from him. Then the two brothers began fighting over whether not it was safe to eat off the same plate as him since there was no doubt in the younger man’s mind that his brother had picked up some disease. 

( ) ( ) ( )

Frank had gotten himself an appointment with his doctor for two weeks after Gerard had been _officially_ moved in. He’d managed to get Gerard an appointment a couple days before his own where the man’s pain killer and antibiotic ointment prescriptions were refilled. Some of his stitches were taken out, too, and the doctor had informed him that he was making some progress in his healing, though not as much as the doctor would’ve liked. 

He needed to keep his wounds cleaner—and drier. Which meant Frank had to change his bandages up to three times a day in some places, even if the wounds weren’t bleeding, so the bacteria couldn’t cultivate. 

At the appointment, Gerard had been screened for STIs—exactly what Frank had made an appointment for—but the results had yet to come back. Frank knew that Gerard _had_ to have caught something from his ordeal in the Jailer’s Den, though the doctors had said it was possible the antibiotics he had taken to keep his wounds from getting infected may have fought anything he’d been infected with. (Anything curable, that is.)

Frank just hoped he hadn’t caught anything serious, and not just because he feared for his own safety. He’d handled so much blood that night and Frank was really terrified that if Gerard had HIV or Hepatitis that he would have it now, too. Complete organ and immune system failure just wasn’t a pleasant idea and now that Frank was sure Gerard and his vagabond brother weren’t out to murder him, thoughts of death by disease kept him up nights. 

Trying to get his work done at the warehouse when all he wanted was to curl up and sleep was proving difficult and Frank hoped that when his test results came back, he’d be able to sleep. 

He’d honestly hoped his doctor’s visit would put some of his fears to rest, but the appointment just made him more anxious. Though he had no _visible_ indicators that he’d caught a disease from Gerard, that didn’t mean he was clean. 

Then, when Gerard’s test results came back and he learned he had Syphilis despite the antibiotics he’d been taking, Frank’s restlessness only grew worse. For nearly a month, Frank and Gerard bounced back and forth between doctor’s appointments. After Gerard’s results came in, Frank had to set him up with a follow-up appointment to get a new treatment (and to have his existing wounds looked after), then it was Frank’s turn to go in to get his results back. 

He was clean. Thank _God_ he was clean. He would have to come back in a few months for be tested again for HIV, but so far things were going well. Gerard also tested negative for HIV which meant he didn’t have it before the night in the bar which pleased him since that night hadn’t been the first time he’d been made to sleep with a group of strange men.

In the passing weeks, Gerard’s wounds had healed up enough for him to be able to bathe himself and finally _sit_ on the furniture instead of only lying down on it. With the ability to move around freely, Gerard’s mood improved just a little. He didn’t lose any of his attitude or his sass, but he was more polite and did help to clean up the house when Frank was at work. 

The only time they really had any troubles was when Frank told Gerard to go easy on the pain medication. He couldn’t possibly still need as much as he was taking, but Gerard didn’t like hearing that. He was an adult, he would scream. He could take care of himself.

What he was going to do when he ran out of pills, Frank had no idea. He really hoped Mikey didn’t come back and offer to sell him pills or other drugs. If Gerard turned back into an addict, Frank couldn’t allow him to stay in his house. He didn’t want to throw him out, knowing he’d just go back to Craig out of desperation, but he would have no choice. If Gerard couldn’t get a job to pay for his habit—assuming it returned—he would steal to get his next fix. 

Frank pitied Gerard, but he wasn’t willing to become his victim. 

Since he became able to sit and lie on his back, Frank had taken his bedroom back and Gerard began to sleep on the couch without complaint. For the first few nights Frank had felt guilty, but after a while he got used to sleeping in his own bedroom and was glad to have it back. His couch was comfortable, but not for long stays…

If he had the money, Frank would buy a pull out couch or a futon for Gerard to sleep on. He wanted him to get better, not fuck up his spinal alignment by making him sleep on the couch. 

While Gerard napped on the couch, Frank sat in his bedroom with his laptop. He was ashamed to admit that after all he’d seen, he’d gone back to some of his older fetish sites—the ones he’d visited before he’d gotten hooked on Father X and Submissive G’s website. So while Gerard was sleeping, Frank took advantage of his rare opportunity for privacy and busied himself with websites of the most obscene nature, though he didn’t notice until afterwards that the videos he was watching were much more tame than before. 

Typically he preferred the most hardcore, explicit videos he could find. Now he was watching videos that were full of bad acting and half-hearted swats with leather crops. If it looked too real, it made him think of Gerard and what he’d seen that night. The knowledge that everything he’d seen on Father X’s site had been fake made him wonder what was actually happening with the models in the videos he saw now. Were those men slaves?—Real slaves? Were those women being held against their will? 

It messed him up so much to know that the “Baby Virgin” he’d been so infatuated with in the classic videos on Father X’s site had actually been an underage teen stuck in an unhealthy, dependent relationship with a sadistic ex-priest. It killed him to know he’d gotten off to videos where the violence had been real and unwanted. He wanted the submissives to get pleasure out of the experience, too. It felt like the whole world of porn had been ruined for him now that he felt the need to know if the submissive was actually okay with what was happening.

Sighing, Frank switched gears and started checking his email instead of surfing for porn. His stomach tightened into a knot when he saw that he had three messages in his inbox from none other than Father X.

The first one—the one sent to him at five that morning—was titled MY PRECIOUS LAMB. The one beneath it had no subject and the third was titled AFTER CARE.

Frank swallowed hard and opened the oldest of the three emails, AFTER CARE. It was addressed to him formally…with his full name, his home address, his cell phone number, and his date of birth. It had come to Craig’s attention that Frank had gone into his home without permission and had _stolen_ his submissive’s belongings as well as a significant amount of money from Craig himself. He was also aware that Frank had allowed Gerard’s wayward, sinner of a brother access to his home and that the man had defiled each and every bottle of liquor in the kitchen. Frank, he said, was now in his debt and owed him close to twenty-five hundred dollars in damages to the house. He expected the money to be paid in full before the week was out or interest would be added at ten-percent each day. 

His mouth had gone dry by the time he reached the end of the email which included Craig’s home _and_ work address. He went back to his inbox, his hands almost shaking from the anxiety. Craig couldn’t sue him for damages. Frank had gone into the house with _Gerard’s_ permission. It was _Gerard’s_ house too. 

Frank opened the first email, MY PRECIOUS LAMB, skipping the untitled on, and was met with another block of text containing even more of his own personal information. His place a work. His supervisors’ names. 

_You have stolen my property,_ the message began. _My lamb was to be returned to me upon my return home. However, you have made it very clear that you have no intent to return my precious lamb to me at all. When I return from my trip, I will come to retrieve my doll and if you attempt to keep him from me, I will make our situation known to the courts. The tortures and abuse to which you have subjected him will no doubt earn you a stay in a penitentiary of the foulest nature. As for my submissive doll, if he resists returning to his guardian, he will earn a punishment far more severe than that which he is accustomed. The behavior he has displayed in recent weeks has been unacceptable and he is fully aware the price he must pay for such disobedience. Since he refuses to contact me as he has been instructed, it is now your responsibility to remind him of the pain of his training. A pain which he now must revisit with mounting severity for each day he refuses to make the effort to report to me._

The man was mad. Did he honestly think he could blackmail Frank into paying him back for damages that _didn’t_ exist? Did he really think he could threaten Frank so much that he would honestly return Gerard to that dangerous situation? Even if Craig had managed to dig up his name and home address—and his work address and god knows what else—he had to know that these emails were incriminating evidence. He mentioned punishing Gerard—any court that would hear the ridiculous case would understand that Craig was insane. 

The email went on, as well, becoming less formal and more aggressive as Craig’s anger got the best of him.

_If you refuse to put my doll in contact with me, I will have no choice but to send a messenger to your home address. This messenger will be known to my precious doll and he will remind G of his place. I will be sure to select an hour when you are work so you cannot interrupt so Gerard can serve his penance. His flesh will pay the price for his disobedience and maybe once he is dripping with the mark of his crime he will return to being my dear, penitent little doll. If he does not willingly return to my home within twenty-four hours of this meeting, I will send two messengers. If he does not learn by then, I will send four and they will bring him to my office for a punishment fitting of his constant disobedience. He will suffer the consequences of his actions. Return him to me. Or he will pay, and you will pay._

_Father X_

Frank stared at the message in shock, wondering if he should call the cops or not. Craig had just threatened to send someone to brutalize—and quite possibly _rape_ —Gerard. He knew where Frank worked and he probably use his strange methods to figure out when Frank would be working to uphold his threats. That messenger could arrive any day… He could be watching them now.

For Craig to know so much, someone _had_ to be spying on them.

Hands trembling, Frank clicked back to his inbox and opened the untitled email. Attached to it was a video that Frank hesitated to watch. After a moment, he turned the volume off on his laptop and opened the video. Immediately he was met with the image of Gerard being whipped across his stomach with a bullwhip long enough to wrap around his torso with each swing. 

It was an old video and Gerard was young in it. Hopefully not underage, Frank thought. He prayed to God Gerard was at least eighteen when he was subjected to the cruelty. There was a thin trail of blood running down the inside of his leg and red welts lined his thighs from the whip. He was gagged but was still screaming around the red ball in his mouth. Face flushed. Eyes pained and desperate. 

In the video, Father X threw the whip onto the ground and walked a full circle around Gerard who trembled, his arms bound and suspended over his head, attached to a bolt in the basement ceiling. Father X was talking and something he said made Gerard’s crying harder and the much younger man lowered his face in shame. Father X took off the gag and pulled his hair, making him lift his head. 

The display made Frank want to cry. He’d seen countless videos just like this one before, only he’d assumed it was safe and sane—consensual. Gerard didn’t look consenting. He looked broken. Even when Father X started kissing him, Gerard merely stood there and received it the same way he’d received his beating. When his hands were freed from their restraints, Gerard dropped to his knees and then fell onto his side, curling into a ball sniveling and sobbing. Father X stooped over him and started petting his hair, but as soon as Gerard tried to lift his head off of the floor, Craig smacked him across the cheek. The force of the blow made Gerard crack his head on the concrete floor of their basement dungeon. He didn’t move after that. Father X had knocked him out.

Frank snapped his laptop shut and stood up from his bed, his entire body shaking. He stumbled out of the bedroom and went to Gerard where he slept on the couch. 

“Gerard, wake up,” he said, shaking the other man gently by the shoulder until he startled him awake.

“What? What!?” Gerard snapped, pushing Frank away out of instinct and pressing himself back against the couch.

“I got… I got some weird emails.”

“Weird…What? What are you talking about?” Gerard rubbed at his face and started sitting up, wincing in pain and letting out a quiet hiss. “Emails?—I don’t use your laptop. I don’t have the password so it’s not because of me.”

“They’re from Craig,” Frank said.

“What?” Gerard looked mortified, his face going pale. “Wh-what did he say?”

“He’s pissed off you left. He’s making _threats._ ” Frank didn’t want to scare the man, but he didn’t know what else to do. He couldn’t hide it. If Gerard were in danger, the man deserved to know.

“Threats? Against you or—or me?”

“Both of us,” Frank said, backing away from the couch and fisting his hands in his hair, unable to stand still in his anxiety. 

“Did he say why?” Gerard asked, his eyes going wide.

“He’s mad we took your things out of his house—I don’t think he likes that you moved out.”

“Shit… Well—Well he can’t do anything if we’re here. He doesn’t—”

“He has my address, he’s got my _work_ address, he knows my bosses’ names. What the hell is wrong with this guy?”

“I-I don’t know,” Gerard stammered. “What did he say? Can…can I see the emails?

“No,” Frank said. The last thing Gerard needed was to see a video of himself getting whipped—being _trained._

“Why not? What did he say!?”

“He…he said if you don’t move back in, he’s going to send someone here to…to _convince_ you.”

“To convince…” Gerard looked confused for a moment, but then his breath caught in his throat and his eyes widened with sudden understanding. “No. No, no. _No.”_ He stood up from the couch and started violently shaking his head back and forth as if to dismiss the thought in his head. “Wh-where…where am I gonna go? He’s… If he sends… Oh no. _No._ Shit— _shit!_ If he sends them…” Gerard moaned and sank down onto the floor, covering his face with his hands. 

“Who? If he sends who?”

“No—Fuck, fuck. I _knew_ this would happen. I _knew_ this would happen! Fuck!”

“Gerard, what…what’s wrong?” Frank asked, knowing exactly what was wrong but wanting details. Who was coming? What had they done to hurt him that scared him so badly? He went to Gerard’s side and sat down beside him, rubbing his shoulder.

“He… He has these friends. Friends from…God only knows where. He doesn’t ever bring them around unless I’ve pissed him off, you know? Shit. Shit…I need to borrow your phone. I need to call Craig. I’ve gotta talk him out of this.”

“The only way he’s going to change his mind is if you go home with him.”

“Then that’s what I’m going to do! I’d rather have _him_ beat me than them! They’re like a pack of _dogs!_ ”

“Gerard, if you go back he’s still going to hurt you. He…he said so in his email. You can’t go back to him.”

“So what am I supposed to do? Sit here and wait for them to come? Wait to get gang raped on your fucking bathroom floor!? No!”

“They can’t break in here.”

“What’s to stop them!? You? A fuckin’ midget?”

“They’re not going to touch me, and if you don’t answer the door, they can’t get in. If they try, call the police. Legally, he can’t do this to you.”

“What the fuck makes you think Craig gives a _shit_ about the law!? Fuck—Fuck, he’s going to hurt me. Shit.” Gerard began to look panicked—like a cornered animal. He kept licking and biting his lips, his whole body twitching as if he were planning to jump up and run away. “Please—please just give me your phone. Let me call him. I can talk him out of this. I’ll…I’ll move back in and it’ll be fine.”

“Gerard, if you go back he’ll just hurt you.”

“Then I’ll take the pills and it won’t matter,” Gerard said, shaking his head and squeezing his eyes shut. Frank could tell that wasn’t what Gerard wanted. His eyes filled with self-loathing every time he swallowed a pain pill or two when he knew he didn’t need one. Frank said nothing to him about it, knowing it wasn’t his place to boss the other man around, but he didn’t want to sit idly by and let Gerard slip back into that lifestyle. 

He would be dead within a month if he went back to Craig.

“Just give me your phone please,” Gerard whimpered. “I need to talk to Craig. I need…I just need to talk to him. I can talk him out of this. I can…I can calm him down.”

It was with great displeasure that Frank finally handed him the phone.


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm an asshole and this chapter is short.

_Chapter 13_

Gerard couldn’t catch his breath or stop shaking. He felt Craig’s presence all around him—the feeling of eyes on the back on his neck. His skin was prickling as he bristled with fear. He thought he would be safe here with Frank. He thought he’d found a way out. 

But there was no way out. There would _never_ be a way out. 

Craig _owned_ him. He belonged to Craig. He was Craig’s pet, his slave, his little whore—his jezebel. 

And Craig was going to prove it. 

Sitting, shaking, on the bathroom floor, Gerard finally dialed Craig’s number and pressed send. It only rang once before his Master answered.

“Is that you, my little, lost lamb?”

Gerard choked a moment, not sure whether to direct his pleas to Craig or to Father.

“F-Father?”

“Yes, my little lamb?”

“P-Please, stop this, Father. I… I’ll come back if you stop this.”

“Now, now—you know me better than that. You ran away from me. You know the punishment for that.”

“Father, please—I’m not playing around. I-I’ll come back to you, Craig. I want us to work out. Just—Just promise me you’re not going to hurt me or—or let them hurt me.” 

“Gerard, you _disrespect_ me time and time again. You will serve your penance and maybe _then_ I’ll let you talk your way out of whippings you deserve.”

“Please, stop,” Gerard cried, bringing his free hand to his face to wipe away his tears. “I-I only left because you hurt me so bad—Craig, you put me in the _hospital._ Don’t you understand?”

“I do not care how you wish to justify your disobedience. I’ve paid to keep you fed, keep you _safe_ and you repay me by running away and sending your wayward brother to break into my home and defile the entire place.”

“I’m sorry,” Gerard whimpered. “Craig, I’m so sorry. Please. _Please,_ don’t hurt me. I’ll come back if you promise not to—”

“I will make no such promises. You disobeyed me and you _will_ be punished. In fact, Gerard, I’ve made a mark now for _every_ time you’ve argued with me in this conversation and for each mark you will earn yourself another week serving penance. You will already be serving three months. Would you like to add more?”

Gerard broke down sobbing, setting the phone aside on the tile—not daring to hang up—as he wept. He knew what penance meant to Father. Penance meant he would be trapped in their dungeon with little water and hardly any food. Penance meant he would be bound twenty-four hours—even when he needed to use the bathroom. He would be made to beg for permission to relieve himself, and then suffer the humiliation of having to have Craig help him. Penance meant whippings every hour. Penance meant hurting. Penance meant suffering. Penance meant praying for death and knowing Father would never allow it.

“Gerard?” The voice came from the discarded cell phone and Gerard stared at it pathetically. “Gerard?... Gerard, every time you don’t answer me, I make a mark. Do you want to spend six months in penance?”

Crying still, Gerard picked up the phone. 

“Father, please…”

“That’s another week, Gerard.”

“I’m not coming back,” Gerard cried, shaking his head in defiance even though he knew it was futile. If he didn’t go willingly, Craig would have _them_ come take him. And if they didn’t succeed, he would come himself. And he alone was worse than any group of men. 

“Then you will get a visit tomorrow morning from David and maybe _he_ can convince you.”

“I won’t answer the door,” Gerard cried. 

“Then he will break it down.”

“I’m going to call the police, Craig. I’m not messing around.”

He hardly sounded intimidating when his voice was a shrill squeak—a shrill cry of fear in every syllable. 

“The police will do nothing but mock you and shame you, you filthy _slut._ Do you think they want to hear about how your _master_ has mistreated you? Why would they believe you don’t _want_ this? Especially after I show them the videos of how much you _love_ the corrective kiss of my whips?”

“Craig, stop it!” Gerard whimpered, the words cutting him like knives. Craig who had so carefully wooed him and seduced him, now degraded him—defiled him. What used to be “precious baby” and “innocent lamb” had turned to “slut” and “whore” and “sinner.” 

“I _will_ stop this. As soon as you come home to me and serve your penance! You _know_ you deserve punishment! You know all I’ve done for you and the repercussions for your disobedience! You _promised_ me that you would never run away again and now you have—”

“I wouldn’t run if you didn’t beat me so much,” Gerard pleaded.

“Don’t you _dare_ interrupt me! You will serve a _year_ in penance! Do you hear me!? One _year!_ And maybe then when I let you out, you will know how to address me with respect!” 

Gerard screamed and dropped the phone, his body nearly convulsing from the fear and dread. A year? A _year_ in penance? He’d never even served more than a week. 

He wanted to believe that it was all a lie—that Craig had lost his temper and was exaggerating—but he knew that tone of voice. Craig was serious. Craig meant to hurt him…or kill him. He’d lost his control and now he was going to take it back by force, prove to Gerard that he was nothing and deserved no love or compassion. 

“Gerard?”

“Gerard?” That was Frank outside the bathroom door. He didn’t knock before opening, and he had his laptop in his hands. 

_“Gerard?”_ Craig, yet again. Frank picked up the phone before Gerard could, filling the man with panic that Frank might hang up—further agitating the man—but he didn’t. He put it on speaker and gestured for Gerard to keep him talking. 

“C-Craig, I—”

“Speak to me with _respect!_ ” 

“Father, please,” Gerard whimpered, watching as Frank set his laptop on the floor.

“Who’s that in the room with you?”

“Wh-what are you talking about?” Gerard stammered, suddenly fearing that Craig could see him-that there were cameras in every room and the man was watching from afar.

“I heard his voice.”

“H-He’s outside the door, Father,” Gerard lied, watching as Frank looked something into his laptop—some sort of black antenna looking device. Frank pressed a few keys and Gerard realized it was a microphone. Frank was recording the call. 

He was going to call the police…

Gerard had to resist the impulse to hang up and protect Craig—protect himself. Even if Craig was arrested, his friends would still be free to do his dirty work. 

“Is he aware that it is _God’s_ will that you be returned to me?” Craig hissed. He knew Frank was listening. He knew and he wasn’t going to say one damned, incriminating thing.

“F-Father, please—please. I can’t go home when you talk like this. You _scare_ me.”

“I wouldn’t strike fear in you if it weren’t for your crimes. You know penance is due to me, Gerard. And you will _pay_ your penance.”

“Father, I don’t want hurt.”

“You serve penance for one year. Then maybe we can work out a new routine.”

“I’m not coming home for that,” Gerard whispered. 

“Then I will send them to get convince you. I won’t force you, Gerard. You know, in the end, you’re always willing. A _whore_ can’t refuse.”

“I’m not a whore,” Gerard cried.

“You are a slut. You’ve probably already let that sinner have his way with you—the one keeping you like a pet. The one whom I trusted to keep you safe who in turn _stole_ you from me.”

Frank rolled his eyes at Craig’s angry words, not at all understanding that a gesture like that in Craig’s mind would earn a week’s worth of beatings.

“He didn’t _steal_ me, Father! He—He _saved_ me! You left me all alone! You abandoned me! I _needed_ you.”

“I had work. I had someplace I needed to be so I can continue paying for your lavish little lifestyle. You think that house is cheap? You think all your sketchbooks and special pencils aren’t costly? You pay me for those things with your body—your body is _my_ property, and if I need to leave you someplace, I will.”

Gerard looked over at Frank brokenly. Did Frank understand now? Did he see why it was impossible to leave Craig? There was no rescuing him. No saving him. He would pay for even entertaining such ideas and he would pay horribly for it. 

“I couldn’t even walk on my own, Craig. You let them _torture_ me and then you left me! Don’t you even love me?”

“You needed taught that my kindness is a privilege—and any privilege can be taken away.”

“They raped me.”

“You’re a whore, Gerard. You can’t be raped. You must have _innocence _to be raped. You are _not_ innocent. You are a sinner and you were punished for your crimes.”__

__“What _crime!?_ That I can’t get it up for you anymore?—That I’m scared of you? What fucking crime!?”_ _

__“If you _swear_ at me one more time, Gerard, you’ll spend _two_ years in penance.”_ _

__“Craig! Stop it! I-I’m not—I’m not serving penance for anything! I ran away because _you_ hurt me! You let them rape me! I begged you to make them stop and you wouldn’t! They tore me apart! How could you just leave me afterwards? Why did you dump me and leave me for someone else to find?”_ _

__“I am sick of talking in circles with you, Gerard. Either you come home and serve your penance, or I will send someone to convince you. And if that doesn’t work, I will come to Mr. Iero’s apartment and I will take you. You _belong_ to me. You are my _property,_ little lamb. I don’t want to hurt you any more than is necessary, but you’re making me think…that every single scar on your body needs reopened all at once.”_ _

__“Craig…” Gerard sobbed, filled to the brim with terror. He didn’t want to go home to pain, but he didn’t want that pain to come to him as well in the form of gang rape—because that’s all Craig’s friends ever did. Maybe they didn’t slash him with whips or bind him, but there was far more degradation in being held down with no weapons and made to accept every lustful touch that came. It broke him to know their satisfaction and pleasure came only from the breaking of his body. They would draw blood with their arousal. They would leave him that way, too, for Frank to find. Or maybe they would force Frank to join in…or subject him to the same treatment._ _

__Frank, who had shown Gerard nothing but compassion from the start, could _not_ endure that on Gerard’s behalf. _ _

__“If you’re not at my home by tomorrow at ten a.m., I will send David to persuade you. Goodbye, my precious lamb.”_ _

__Gerard stared at the phone, crying and unable to speak a word before the screen lit up and showed that the call had been ended._ _

__“Gerard, he’s not going to get you,” Frank said, trying to offer comfort. “I won’t _let_ him get you.”_ _

__“You can’t do anything,” Gerard whispered. “F-Father can… Father can see anything. He can be anywhere… I-I have to go back.”_ _

__“Gerard, I’m not letting you go back to that psychopath. We’re going the cops.”_ _

__“No!”_ _

__“Gerard, we have to,” Frank said, rubbing Gerard’s shoulder. Gerard pulled away from him, afraid Craig’s unseen eyes would witness it and add the gesture to the list of his crimes—further lengthening his penance. “He’s not going to stop.”_ _

__“Just let me go back. I-I just have to go back. I can’t… I can’t hide. He-He’ll come back.”_ _

__“Gerard, if we go to the police, they’ll stop him. We can get you a restraining order—” He kept talking as if he really thought going to the police was that easy. Didn’t he realize how dumb they would look? How foolish he would look? The police would _never_ take him seriously. Never… Craig would show them the website and say it was all just part of the game and he didn’t realize Gerard was unhappy. _ _

__Gerard could even bare to imagine the way the officers would look at him—like he was the lowest lifeform on earth. He was nothing but a glorified prostitute, paying for all of the luxuries Craig could afford with his body, and sleeping with Craig’s sadistic friends when the price was too high. No one in a police station would pity him or understand him the way Frank did. They would mock and laugh and scoff—just like the hospital staff had._ _

__( ) ( ) ( )_ _

__“So, let’s go over this one more time…” The officer said, looking from Frank to Gerard who sat shaking with his head in his hands. “Your ex-boyfriend is threatening to send someone to ‘convince’ you to move back in with him?” He had before him on the desk copies of all the emails Frank had received (minus the one including the explicit video) as well as Frank’s laptop which had the audio recording on it even though the words Craig had said were hardly intimidating on their own. To the cop, he just sounded like a jealous ex not ready to move on._ _

__“He’s not going to send someone to _talk_ to me—they’re going to beat the hell out of me,” Gerard whimpered. “They’ve done it before when I’ve tried to leave in the past.”_ _

__“And you don’t have any friends or relatives you can stay with—people he doesn’t know about?”_ _

__“No! I’ve _told_ you—Craig knows everyone I know. He—He stalks me, I don’t know…”_ _

__“He got my home address and my _work_ address without me knowing,” Frank said, coming to Gerard’s defense. “He knows my boss’s number, for God’s sake. The man is crazy. Moving away isn’t going to stop him.”_ _

__“We can get a restraining order, but it’ll only be for him. We’re the police department. Not a body guard service. If his friends come, don’t open the door for them. If they’re insistent, then you can call us, but otherwise there’s little else we can do. Most of the time, guys like this _Craig_ get bored and move on.”_ _

__“You’re not listening—Craig won’t stop! He—He’s _psychotic._ ”_ _

__“He doesn’t even have any prior offenses. I’m afraid there’s little else we can do unless—”_ _

__“Unless he shows up and beats the hell out of Gerard,” Frank snapped. “Great. Real fuckin’ proactive.”_ _

__Gerard’s eyes widened in fear on Frank’s behalf. How he could speak that way to a police officer—to a person of authority—was far beyond Gerard’s comprehension._ _

__“Look, what I’m saying is this relationship seems very…complicated. There’s a lot of layers going on and, frankly, it doesn’t make much sense to me. You seem to have let Craig get away with this a long time— _wanted_ it, even—so why all of a sudden are you flipping the script? Does he even understand you’re not just playing another little…game with him?”_ _

__“He knows I’m not playing a game,” Gerard said, unable to sound stern._ _

__The officer looked at him and sighed, looking unconvinced. Then he repeated what he’d said before—until Craig actually harmed him, there was nothing other than paperwork they could do._ _


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yay! Action!

_Chapter 14_

Frank couldn’t relax or get his mind off it, no matter what he tried to do to distract himself. All night, he laid in bed listening to Gerard muttering and whispering to himself on the couch—unable to sleep as well. The man seemed like he was on the verge of a mental break, or going through one, and there was _nothing_ Frank could do that would soothe or comfort him. Going to the police had done nothing but embarrass Gerard—and make the situation worse. 

If Craig heard he went to the police, the punishment would be worse Gerard kept mumbling the whole ride to the station and the whole drive back. 

Frank was terrified for him and for himself as well. If those men did come and they did try to hurt Gerard, what was to stop them for coming after Frank as well? Frank didn’t want Gerard hurt, but he didn’t like the idea of having himself beaten or tortured as well. Especially not since all he ever did was offer a victim of a crime some support. 

Craig had left Gerard in that bar—he’d left him bleeding, he’d left him _bound,_ he’d left him behind like trash… What right did he honestly think he had to get angry that Gerard didn’t intend to go home to him? And why did he think these stupid threats were the way to keep him? 

It made Frank sick that he’d gotten off to those videos for so long without ever realizing how terrible they actually were. Without realizing that in half of them, Gerard was underage. Without realizing that Gerard’s crying wasn’t part of the game…

He was just as bad as Craig—he was just as bad as the men in that bar who had helped to brutalize Gerard that night. He may not have landed a blow on his flesh, but he did nothing to intervene or stop it. Frank was one of the reasons why this situation had gotten so out of hand, and all night he laid in bed trying to think of a way out of it.

Craig made it obvious that he would follow Gerard anywhere and that he would follow Frank, too. He knew where Frank worked, he knew his boss… He was a stranger, but if he started making calls claiming Frank was a dangerous or reckless employee, his boss would probably fire him just to spare himself the headache. Frank was just a warehouse worker—he was replaceable. 

When Frank’s alarm went off, he immediately got up and went to shower. Gerard was quiet, finally, probably having passed out rather than gone to sleep, however. Even in the shower, his mind stayed on Craig and the threats he had made.

Frank was worried for Gerard. He didn’t want to leave him here in the house alone, unprotected, but there was nowhere else to put him. He had to stay in the house…he just couldn’t answer the door. Frank would have to trust him to call 911 if the men Craig sent tried to break in—if anyone came at all.

Frank _wanted_ to believe that this was all just some sort of insane intimidation tactic, but he had no doubts that Craig was serious. He was a possessive sadist who masqueraded as a dom. His submissive wasn’t a partner, he was a toy—a slave. He was property. Craig would see nothing wrong with breaking into Frank’s home to steal back what was his. 

Except the people Craig was sending weren’t there to kidnap—they were there to torture, to break Gerard’s will and make him crawl back on his own. Crawl back and get punished worse for it… Craig really gave Gerard no easy way out. It was either submit to pain or face pain and then be given more. 

Frank couldn’t even imagine the hell Gerard lived in with Craig, day in and day out. It was no wonder he was addicted to pills—pain pills of all things. He probably needed them after all the abuse he endured. 

Before Frank left that morning for work he stopped by the couch and rubbed Gerard’s shoulder until the man stirred awake.

“Hey, you should sleep in the bedroom. You look uncomfortable,” Frank said softly.

“Bedroom?” Gerard murmured, sitting up and blinking hard to clear his vision. 

“Yeah. Keep the door closed. I’ll leave my phone for you incase anything happens, you can call for help, okay?”

“Do you think the police would really come?” Gerard asked as Frank helped him onto his feet. 

“If you call, they’ll come. Do you know the address?”

“No,” Gerard mumbled. 

“I’ll write it down for you. If anyone comes, you call right away, alright? Just stay in the bedroom and stay safe.” 

As soon as Gerard was nestled down in the bed, Frank couldn’t resist the urge to pet his hair—wanting only to offer comfort. He was scared to leave Gerard here alone, but there was nothing he could do. Ray had work, Mikey had gone back to _wherever_ he came from… There was no choice. 

Gerard just watched him, his eyes tired and hopeless. He wasn’t panicking anymore, but only because he’d run out of energy. Frank could tell he was still terrified. 

Frank quickly jotted down his address on the back of a discarded receipt on his dresser and set it on his nightstand beside his cell phone.

“Stay safe,” he repeated, petting Gerard’s hair one last time before leaving the bedroom, closing the door behind him. 

He still had about a half an hour before he needed leave for work, but Frank found himself too restless to eat or even make coffee. He hoped that if anyone came for Gerard, the man would know to hide himself until the cops came. Maybe Craig’s messenger would think Gerard ran away if he couldn’t find him…

With that in mind, Frank started picking up the apartment, trying to hide anything that belonged to Gerard so it would appear he was gone. He hid the sketchbooks under couch cushions and the prescription bottles in his box of trash bags under the kitchen sink. If they got to the bed room, all of Gerard’s clothes were there, but it wasn’t impossible to believe he’d just disappeared and left them behind, unable to take it all.

Frank took one last look around his home before stepping out and locking the door behind him, praying he still had a house to return to after work—and that Gerard would still be there, breathing.

( ) ( ) ( )

As soon as Frank left, Gerard was wide awake. His sleep had been interrupted and there was no returning to it now—not now that the fear had slipped back in. Frank at least seemed to have gotten a grasp on the situation. He knew now that Craig wasn’t one to be messed with, but Gerard could tell that Frank was still naïve. He didn’t doubt that Craig would send someone to his home, but he didn’t seem convinced that that person—the David—would break in. 

Frank didn’t understand how Craig could get. 

But he would learn…

Gerard sat curled up against the headboard, his knees to his chest and his arms wrapped around them. His back and thighs were still hurting from his attack at the Jailer’s Den, but not nearly as bad as it had been. He didn’t even need a pain pill, though he wanted one—and wanted one badly. 

It wasn’t like he could just get up and get one, though. He was terrified that if he did move, David or Craig or another messenger would appear and catch him. 

So Gerard just sat still, staring at the bed, and waited—waited for what he knew was about to come.

Around two-thirty, a sound alerted him. It was a thump against Frank’s covered, bedroom window. Gerard turned his head quickly toward it and saw a shadow through the curtain. The drapes covered the entire window, top to bottom and edge to edge so whoever was outside couldn’t see in, but Gerard knew that didn’t matter. 

He held his breath as he watched shadow slip away, counting the seconds before he heard a clear, steady pounding on the front door. Three knocks, then two quick chimes of the doorbell.

Gerard started shaking and looked around frantically. He grabbed the cell phone and the note with Frank’s home address off the nightstand, but when a fourth and fifth bang came to the door, he dropped the phone which clattered onto the ground. 

He sank his teeth into his bottom lip and stared down at the phone as if the floor were some foreign realm he couldn’t reach.

The banging came again and let out a shrill gasp, wanting to scream but terrified of making a sound. Images flooded his brain—memories of pain and torture, cruel and hurtful jabs whispered into his ear and shouted at him. 

A year in penance, Father had threatened. A year served in penance if he went home of his own free will today with David. If he refused, it would be a year in penance plus whatever torture David would have in mind—whatever the men who would come to Frank’s home later would have in mind every day that he refused to play along. 

“Gerard! I know you’re in there!” The voice was so muffled, but to Gerard it was as loud as a gunshot.

The doorbell was pressed three more times, then David started hammering on the door again. 

Gerard shook his head and looked down at the phone on the floor. He was too scared to grab it, too ashamed to call the police. What Craig had in store for him, he’d earned. What idiot ran off with a pedophile? What idiot let himself be beaten on a daily basis and called that a relationship?—considered it love?

“Gerard!”

Gerard let out a deep sob and covered his face, too scared to move—unable to think anything through. Maybe he could open the window and climb out, run off down the street. Maybe he should just get up and answer the door. The pain would be less if he just complied. The damage would be less…

But Gerard just couldn’t bring himself to do.

The doorbell was pressed once more. Then there were three, calm knocks. 

That was Gerard’s cue.

David had lost his patience and was coming inside, one way or another. The front door faced the street, so he was going to come in a window. 

Terrified that David would come through the bedroom window he’d been inspecting, Gerard slipped off the bed onto the ground. He had the mad idea that he should straighten the bedspread, and had just gotten the pillow fluffed and in place—the blankets tucked over it—when he head glass shatter.

Gerard whipped his head around and stared at the bedroom door, expecting it to be thrown open at any second. He heard more glass break, then an awful, groaning noise as David made his way into the house. 

Taking in another shaking breath, Gerard’s instinct for self-preservation took over. He couldn’t sit still and wait to be caught—to be tortured and raped in Frank’s bed. He had to think fast. 

Seated on the floor, he looked around the room. There was a closet he could hide in, but that just made him an easy target—cornered with nowhere to slip away once David tore open the door. He could run for the window, but he doubted he would have time to get far before he was caught and dragged to David’s car…

All that was left was the low-sitting bed, but when Gerard tried to fit himself under it, a large case and piece of luggage got in his way.

“Gerard! You’d better show yourself!” He heard a loud thud—David making his way down from the window over the kitchen sink, Gerard bet—and then heavy footsteps. 

He hurried around to the other side of the bed, but there was guitar case under the bed on that side. Gerard pressed on it, and saw he could fit it about a foot and half further under the bed before it struck against the luggage on the other side. That meant there was enough room for him, perhaps, to fit underneath the bed if he stayed on his side. The luggage would completely conceal him from view from their side, and he could use the guitar case and Frank’s nightstand to conceal him from the other. 

“Father’s waiting for you, Gerard,” David called, his tone now low and menacing as he began to toy with his prey, knowing that if he was in the house he was cornered and trapped. 

Gerard took a deep breath and pulled the guitar case out slowly, hoping the noise of it sliding across the floor wasn’t loud enough for David to hear. As soon as it was out of the way, Gerard began the daunting task of lying face-down on the floor and mashing himself under the bed. The space between the floor and the underside of the bed was too small for him and his back was scraped against the wooden planks and metal supports as he crawled underneath it. 

There was no way for him to lie on his side to leave enough room for the guitar case as well as himself under the bed, and he was forced to crawl toward the head of the bed and the wall. If he curved himself into an odd, uncomfortable L-shape, he could press himself against the wall and get the black guitar case back into its spot. 

“Come out, come out wherever you are,” David called, letting out a sick laugh as Gerard squirmed and forced his way to the head of the bed. It proved difficult to get his hands on the case from his position, and every time his fingers would slip, he could hear David’s footsteps drawing nearer and nearer. 

Once he had the case over as far he could, Gerard closed his eyes tightly and tried to control his breathing, knowing if he started to hyperventilate, he’d be caught in no time—and punished worse for hiding.

Just as he thought he might be alright, that he might get through this if only just today, David started pounding on the bedroom door.

“Open up, you little slut,” David said, his tone a mockery of politeness. When he got no response, he turned the knob and let the door slowly swing open.

Knowing his breaths would give him away, Gerard closed his eyes and quit breathing. He sank his teeth into his bottom lip, trying to focus on the sting of his skin over the trembling in his limbs or the adrenaline running hot through his veins. 

“Oh—you want to play hide and seek, huh? Alright. Let’s play.” 

Gerard silently let out the breath he’d been holding when he heard the closet door thrown open. He opened his eyes, but couldn’t see anything except a few cracks of light between the ends of the luggage and guitar case. 

“Not in the closet, huh? Must be…under the bed!” 

Gerard pulled in a deep breath and held it, forcing himself to watch the shadow of David’s body as he knelt down at the foot of the bed. David began pushing on the luggage, and then the guitar case. If he pulled the guitar case completely out from under the bed, he would be able to see Gerard crammed in the tight space, up against the wall, despite his dark clothes and Gerard knew it. 

He was caught. This was the end. 

David was going to take out the case, grab him by his ankles and drag him out. He’d be slapped, punched kicked, stripped—raped. His screams would go unheard. No one was going to come help. 

“Well, what the fuck…” David shoved on the suitcase, then pulled it out—not the guitar case. The other piece of luggage and the angle he was bent into, kept Gerard from view, the guitar case masking his upper body from David’s angle. 

All of a sudden the guitar case was shoved forward toward Gerard’s face, and as soon as it smacked into him, his head hit the wall, making it sound as though the case had struck against the dry wall—leading David to believe that nothing else was stored under the bed, no room for a body. Somehow, Gerard managed to withhold the whimper of surprise as the pain shot through his nose and the back of his skull, though it was hard to hear what was happening over the thrum of his pulse in his ears. 

“Not in the bedroom, huh?” David said, his clothes rustling as he stood back up. 

Gerard kept his eyes squeezed shut and struggled to keep quiet, even breaths as he heard the man start pacing around the room. 

“I know you’re here, Gerard! You can’t hide from me!” David then kicked the foot of the bed, causing it to shift to the right. Gerard winced, but the bed didn’t move enough to expose him and he was able to keep silent. 

David left the room, occasionally punching a wall and screaming for Gerard to show himself. The whole time, Gerard kept his place under the bed, not daring to move even when his limbs started to go numb from the pressure. 

Even when he heard the front door open and close, he didn’t move. There was no sigh of relief, no crawling out and calling to report a break in. He stayed still, frozen. 

David hadn’t left. There was no way he’d leave that easily. Even if Gerard heard him open cupboards and shift furniture, he knew David hadn’t given up. The man could smell fear. He knew Gerard was in the house. He knew he would find him. He was a wolf stalking its prey…

As the minutes dragged by, Gerard began crying. He tried hard to keep his sniffling to himself, but before long he knew it was a futile effort.

David had to have heard him by now—he was probably lying on the bed, listening to the sound—getting off on it, letting it arouse him and build him up for the game he was about to play with his unwilling partner. 

Gerard could feel his presence—his overwhelming existence—heavy overtop him. 

After an hour, Gerard broke his composure and started to sob. He wanted David to just get it over with, drag him out and torture him. He’d had enough of the suspense, but couldn’t drag himself out from his hiding place. His legs were both numb—not even tingling—as if he didn’t have them at all. 

( ) ( ) ( )

His front door was unlocked and that filled Frank with immediate terror. He hurried inside and was met with furniture strewn about, his couch overturned, his dishes smashed—his kitchen window completely shattered. Gerard’s sketch books lie in tatters on the living room floor, the refrigerator door was open—the compressor running ceaselessly as it tried to keep temperature.

It was the scene of a horror film and Frank knew immediately what had happened. 

Craig’s threats were not empty, and with the house left in disarray, Frank knew Gerard hadn’t called the police. 

In a daze, Frank stumbled over the strewn furniture and broken glass to his kitchen and closed the refrigerator door. He didn’t know whether to feel fear or anger—or sorrow. 

The house was silent except for the hum of the fridge and he knew Gerard was gone. 

He turned around and stared at the broken window, a breeze from outside making the curtain flutter in and out. Slowly, Frank turned around to face the rest of the damage. There was dent punched into his wall and he feared it had been caused by Gerard’s head—smashed against it to keep him disoriented while Craig’s messenger dragged him outside. 

Frank stooped to pick up some of the tattered sketches, feeling pain rip through him as he saw a drawing of himself in the ripped up pages. 

He let the papers fall back onto the floor and walked toward his bedroom. The door was wide open and one of his larger suitcases was pulled out from under his bed which was shifted at an odd angle as though it had been kicked or shoved.

His closet door was open as well and he stepped over to close it, not sure where else to begin in cleaning up the mess. His phone wasn’t on his nightstand where he’d left it and he hoped Gerard had it on him wherever he was taken so maybe, just maybe he could get the chance to call for help.

After closing the door, he stepped over to his bed and sat down, putting his head in his hands. He didn’t know what to do now… Obviously, he had to borrow a neighbor’s phone and call the police—report the break-in and Gerard missing. But then what? 

Gerard was gone. They’d taken him. He’d be back with Craig—back being abused and tortured for a sick man’s pleasure. 

The thought brought tears to Frank’s eyes though he desperately fought them. He felt violated to have his home broken into and the only thing stolen from him was his peace of mind and his friend… He didn’t want Gerard to be gone. He didn’t want him to be hurt.

He’d never be able to sleep again knowing where Gerard ended up…

Frank sighed and rubbed at his face before laying back on the bed. Of all the discord in the house, the bed was strangely made—the pillows in place and the blankets draped over them.

Perhaps Gerard had fixed it before hiding—hoping to make it look like he’d never been there.

As he lay there, staring up at the ceiling, Frank suddenly became alerted to another sound that made him immediately sit back up. At first, he couldn’t place it or where it came from, then it came again—a little louder and Frank bolted up from the bed. 

It was whimpering—crying—from underneath the bed. 

Craig had said he would send someone to convince Gerard, not take him—he wanted Gerard to crawl back to him on his own. 

Someone had come and hurt Gerard, and left him behind in pain.

“Gerard?” Frank said, kneeling down to look under the bed. He pulled his guitar case away and peered through the shadow, barely able to the see a pale swatch of Gerard’s skin in the dark. As soon as he reached for him, though, Gerard let out a low whine and slammed back against the wall. “Hey—Hey, Gerard, it’s okay. It’s just me. Are you alright? Do you need me to get an ambulance?”

Gerard said nothing, but when Frank tried to grab his arm and coax him out, Gerard flinched again.

“It’s okay; I promise. It’s just me. You need to come out, okay? I won’t hurt you.”

But Gerard refused to move and Frank had no choice but to stand up and pull the bed away from the wall. Gerard let out a shrill gasp and tried to move along with the bed, but it banged against his shoulder when he moved and he had no choice but to lie still until Frank had pulled it out from over him. 

“Gerard, it’s okay. It’s just me,” Frank said, climbing over to the space where Gerard lie. He didn’t seem to be hurt, but his face was streaked with tears and his eyes were wide and fearful. “What happened?”

Gerard stared, not speaking a word, just shaking and sniveling. 

Frank kneeled beside him and pushed the dark bangs from his face, relieved to see him alive and seemingly unharmed although terrified. 

“Did he find you?” Frank asked. 

Still, he just stared. 

Frank looked around and spotted his phone lying next to the nightstand along with the note.

“I’m going to call the police okay? Report the break-in.” Frank tried to offer Gerard a smile, but couldn’t quite manage to form one. Not with Gerard staring at him the same way he had when Frank found him the first time. “You’re safe now. No one’s going to hurt you.”

As he started to dial 911, Gerard moved a hand toward him and bumped it against Frank’s knee. When Frank looked down at him, his heart melted a little more as he watched Gerard struggle to form words. 

He stammered a long time before finally forming his question.

“Is David still here?” He asked.

“No,” Frank said, petting Gerard’s hair once again. He didn’t know what made him do it, but when Gerard kept staring, he leaned down and pressed a kiss to his cheek. 

Instantly, Gerard’s arms wrapped around him and the man started sobbing desperately into Frank’s shoulder, clutching onto Frank’s shirt. He was shaking hard and Frank had to sit back in order to support him and keep them both from toppling over. 

“It’s okay,” he whispered, squeezing Gerard as hard as he could. It was so much easier to offer comfort when he could touch without hurting. “I won’t let him get you. You’re okay. Did he hurt you?”

“No,” Gerard whimpered.

Frank sighed in relief and nuzzled his cheek against Gerard’s head, so thankful he’d been spared any physical pain even though he’d been emotionally scarred by the intrusion. 

“You did so good,” Frank whispered. “You had a good hiding place. I didn’t even think you were here still—scared me.” 

Gerard sniffled a little, trying to fight his sobs, and loosened his grip around Frank’s shoulders, the hug still needy but less desperate. 

“You were so good—so good, angel. You’re safe now. I promise. No one’s going to hurt you, angel. You’re okay. You did so good.” Frank whispered every soothing word and phrase he could think of, trying to remember any tip or trick to help soothe someone who was so distressed—trying to make up for the one time his soft side came out too late. 

He held Gerard until he stopped shaking and then ceased crying. He rubbed Gerard’s back and stroked his hair, occasionally kissing his temple and cheek when he could pry Gerard off of his chest long enough. 

“I have to call for help, okay? The cops’ll come and I’ll sneak you out. I’ll take you somewhere Craig can’t find you. If they’re watching, I’ll keep you hidden, okay? No one’s gonna get you. No one’s gonna hurt you.”

Gerard nodded his head, but stayed pressed close to Frank’s chest as he looked up and then dialed the local police department. With Gerard safe in his arms, there was no need to call 911. The situation was bad, but it was no longer an emergency.


	15. Chapter 15

_Chapter 15_

Gerard shook in the hard, wooden chair at the police department. He’d been questioned about David—interrogated, really—until he told everything he knew. It would result in a worse punishment when Father finally got him back, but Gerard couldn’t take any more pressure or stress. He just needed this to stop. He didn’t want to serve a year in penance, but he wanted this madness to _stop._

“Hey, I got you a cup of coffee. It’s decaf.” Frank set the little paper cup down in front of him on the table. Gerard stared at it and swallowed hard. He didn’t want coffee, not unless it was laced with poison or pills. He wished he could get high.

He wished he could get high enough to forget all of this. 

“Listen… I talked to Ray on the phone a little bit ago. He said you can stay at his place for the next couple of nights. Craig’s guys….they don’t know where Ray lives. I got one of the officers to agree to drop you off at the hospital where Ray works and he can take you to his place after his shift. If Craig’s guys are watching, they won’t see you leave. You’ll be safe. I promise.”

Gerard glanced up at him and then quickly turned his focus back down to the coffee, slowly reaching forward to take the cup. 

“Gerard?” Frank placed his hands on Gerard’s shoulder and started rubbing it gently.

“That’s fine,” Gerard whispered. He hated this. He hated every single second of it. He didn’t want to go live with some virtual stranger. How could he feel safe with Ray? He didn’t _know_ Ray, other than the fact that he was Frank’s friend and a male nurse.

“I…I know that if I go to Ray’s, they’re probably going to follow me, so… For a week or two…I probably won’t be able to see you, but you can call me. I don’t want to cut you out or anything. I just want you to be safe.”

“There’s no place safe from Craig,” Gerard whispered, lifting up the coffee and taking a sip, closing his eyes as he tried to will away the trembling of his hand.

“We’ll find a place,” Frank said.

“Witness protection?” Gerard asked, trying to force some sort of arrogance into his tone. “The city morgue?” 

“We’ll _find_ a place,” Frank repeated.

Gerard stared at the crappy cup of police station coffee and shook his head. They would never find a place safe from Craig. He bet the officer trusted to deliver him to Ray at the hospital was a friend of Craig’s. 

He bet he’d be beaten in the back of the cruiser. 

And, if not, he bet he’d just be laughed at some more. He could hardly stand the sideways glances all of the cops were giving him, like he was something disgusting. Something they needed to hose out of one of their drunk tanks and wash down the drain. 

Everything he got, he deserved. They knew what he was. They were trained to spot the lowest of the world’s scum. They didn’t want to help him. They only did because _Frank_ begged them to. Frank who seemed to be a good citizen—Gerard bet he even paid his taxes. He bet Frank would go to jury duty if he was summoned. 

He wasn’t like Gerard. 

He wasn’t like the dumb, pill-head the cops saw whenever they looked at Gerard. He wasn’t a victim in their eyes—he was an idiot who got what he deserved. What had he thought would happen when he agreed to have sex with his family’s priest the first time? What did he think would happen when the abuse started?—That it would magically stop one day?

They didn’t want to keep him safe. They _couldn’t_ keep him safe. 

It didn’t matter if he went to Ray’s or Mikey’s or fucking California. Craig would find him. Craig would find him…no matter where he went or what he did. Craig would come. Craig would take him…

He’d serve a year in penance…maybe two.

And if he survived that, he would know to be so well behaved he’d probably never get whipped again. 

Maybe, if he was lucky, Craig would tire of having him in penance and let him out in a few months.

It would be more likely to happen if he went back on his own…

But what kind of life was it to be trapped in pain and anguish for _months?_ He’d be better off dead. Gone. Buried or burned.

“Frank, I… I don’t want to go to Ray’s,” Gerard said softly. 

“Wh-why not?” Frank asked, quickly pulling up a chair beside Gerard. “I promise, Gerard, they won’t find you there. They don’t know Ray. You’ll be safe.”

“There’s nowhere safe from Craig. You just don’t get that… If I go away, Craig’s just going to turn on you. He knows I didn’t disappear. He’ll know you’re hiding me. He’ll come after you and I don’t want that.”

“You don’t need to worry about me. I’ll be safe. He know if someone comes after me, I’m going to call the cops—”

“Craig’s not scared of the cops. He’s not scared of anyone. If you don’t—”

“Stop being so dramatic, Gerard. Craig’s just a man—”

“Yeah, a madman!” Gerard snapped. He wished Frank would take him seriously. He’d seen what Craig was capable of—he saw the sort of damage men at Craig’s disposal could do. Why did he think the threat of police was enough to stop him.

“I know you’re scared, okay? I’m—I’m worried, too. But you’ve gotta let me help you. I-I _care_ about you. I don’t want you to go back to that guy. He’s going to murder you. I can’t…I can’t let that happen.” Frank started rubbing Gerard’s back, trying to comfort him when they both knew nothing possibly could. 

( ) ( ) ( )

Frank couldn’t sleep—he couldn’t rest, couldn’t relax. For two days he’s sat in his house staring at the doors, at the windows, listening. Silently listening. Every click, every scratch, every noise outside drew his attention. Every little sound, to Frank, was a stranger breaking in. David coming to finish what he’d started with Gerard even though Gerard was safely tucked away in Ray’s fifth-floor apartment. 

Gerard was safe, but now Frank feared for himself. He “stole” Gerard from Craig, and if he was willing to send someone to break into his home and destroy the place and attempt to hurt Gee, he was capable of anything. He cared about the law about as much as the law cared about Gerard. The police wouldn’t help and Craig knew that. He could stalk, he could threaten, he could send people, but unless he made himself an easy target, the police weren’t going to break a sweat looking for him—not over a gay-lovers’ spat anyway. 

Frank bet that if Gerard were a pretty little blonde chick with giant breasts, the police would be parked outside of Frank’s apartment right now, waiting to catch the baddies and keep the damsel in distress safe. Unfortunately, though, Gerard was male and had a dodgy past. The police didn’t give a shit about him.

After hearing footsteps outside his house all night, Frank left his apartment for the first time in over forty-eight hours. He’d called work and told them he needed to take unpaid vacation and had been lucky enough to have the time off permitted. He gathered what money he could afford to lose and set out, locking the door even though he knew if someone wanted it, they’d get in regardless. He was no longer naïve enough to think that locks and shut windows kept out bad guys. He wasn’t in a shitty neighborhood, but that didn’t matter when the filth was out to get him.

With his hood up and his head down, Frank made his way through the front doors of Ernie’s Pawn. There were about six other men of a much more intimidating stature than him in the shop, but he ignored them. They wouldn’t hurt him without being provoked.

Frank lowered his hood when he reached the counter and called for the attention of the shopkeeper. He needed a gun and it needed bullets—and he wanted it now. The shopkeeper looked him over, shrugged, and then took out a case from the back room. In the time it took him to come back from the back room, three of the men who’d been in the store had left with items that weren’t kept behind glass stuffed deep in their pockets. 

Inside the case which the shopkeeper brought up was small revolver. 

“Usually I only sell unregistered guns to the ladies,” the shopkeeper said, looking Frank over. “You know, so they can protect themselves from punks like you.”

“Well I need this one to protect someone I care about from punks like them,” Frank said, subtly tipping his head in the direction of the remaining three men in the shop. “I’m not looking to rob a bank or shoot my girlfriend—I just need to keep someone out of my house. I don’t want to use it, but if I have to, your name won’t come up. If the cops ask about my gun, I’ll come up with something.”

The man shrugged and then listed a price. In less than fifteen minutes, Frank was walking back out of the pawn shop with the gun tucked in the waistband of his jeans. He’d never held a gun in his life, but he knew how to work one. Even if his aim was shit, he was sure a gun could be enough of a silent threat against whoever broke in looking for Gerard. He wasn’t _their_ lost toy. They wouldn’t want to risk their lives to have him back. 

When Frank got home, he sat on his couch and practiced putting in and removing the bullets, wiping them down with a cloth with every touch. If someone came in, he’d shoot them on sight—then he’d stage a fight, then say he wrestled the gun away from the attacker. That lie couldn’t work if his fingerprints were all over the bullets as well as the handle and the barrel—and the trigger and the safety. 

By the time it got dark, Frank had moved to sit on the floor about ten feet back from his front door. He’d wiped down the gun and had it sitting on the floor beside him—waiting. 

( ) ( ) ( )

Gerard had been asked not to call Frank or try to contact him in case Craig had somehow hacked Frank’s phone and could see the calls. If he could stalk Frank and hunt down his address and his place of work, he could do the same to Ray. And even if the food Ray made and kept around the house was healthy and bland and tasteless, he didn’t want the man hurt or killed because of him.

It had been four days since David had broken into Frank’s home, four days since Gerard had been pulled out from under that bed and held in warm, safe arms… But those arms were gone now. Frank was back at home, hopefully still alive. It was torture for Gerard, not knowing if his savior and guardian was safe. 

Maybe he was sick—maybe he was going crazy—but Gerard felt sick without Frank beside him. They hadn’t been the most friendly with each other, but Frank never terrorized him the way everyone else did. He didn’t hit—he yelled sometimes and told Gerard things he didn’t want to hear, but he never really hurt him. He never told Gerard something he didn’t already know to be true. He was mad to think that he loved Craig and that Craig loved him. He was a prisoner and a toy to Craig, not a partner—not even a boyfriend. A pet. An unloved slave who made Father X rich through legal, filmed prostitution, pornography, and internet click revenue. 

Craig made hundreds of thousands of dollars off his site and his DVD sales and his shows at the clubs each year. Gerard was surprised Frank didn’t own the boxed set of highlights from the worst of his nights with Craig, and maybe some of the best too. It wasn’t all bad. At least not in the beginning. 

Gerard used to feel like he was suffocating when he was in the same room as Craig, but when he went out of the house he felt the same way—choking on his absence as much as his presence. Now he felt that way about Frank. It was like he couldn’t breathe without the man around him. Frank had kept him safe when _everyone_ who had ever tried in the past had failed him. Frank, who had no reason to be kind or considerate of Frank, made him feel so safe. 

Being apart and not know if Frank was still breathing or if Craig’s guys had come and tortured him… For the first day at he stayed at Ray’s apartment, Gerard didn’t speak a word to him—too intimidated and unhappy about being passed around, not to mention the shock that had set in after trying desperately to hide under the bed. Then, on the second day, Gerard dared to ask Ray to call Frank or at least text him, just to see if he was still alive.

Ray told him no, but assured him that Frank was fine. He couldn’t call. What if Craig had a bug on the phone? What if Craig could hear the calls? Did Gerard _want_ to risk being found again?

So Gerard had to sit in Ray’s apartment all day while the man worked a twelve hour shift, not knowing whether or not his only living friend was actually still alive. And it was the same the next day and the next until Ray finally, _finally_ sent Frank a text to see if he was alive. 

He said he was fine, that he was prepared for another break-in and would tell Ray if anything happened. That was all.

For two hours Gerard sat in the corner of Ray’s apartment, pressed between the wall and the corner of Ray’s entertainment center, hurt—though he wouldn’t admit it—that Frank hadn’t asked about him, not even through some kind of code. It made him feel that Frank had just sent him away to save himself, and only cared that Gerard stayed alive because he didn’t want the blood on his hands like he would if he just kicked Gerard out without place to stay.

But then, just before Ray went to bed, Frank texted him to ask how his new cat was settling in. Ray didn’t have a cat. Ray told him that Gerard was being skittish and hiding—narrating the whole conversation to Gerard who stayed in his place in the corner. 

Gerard felt a little better knowing Frank did care, but a passive text message wasn’t the same as a call. Even if Craig was watching them, Gerard—after days without hearing from his rescuer—wanted that closeness back. He wanted to hear from Frank and talk to him… When his mind wasn’t filled with fear and worry about Craig and David and the other monsters coming for him, Gerard couldn’t help but think of his friend—the man who had scraped him up off that bathroom flood, got him medical care despite his own ignorant pleas to avoid it, continued to care for him and nurture him after Craig abandoned him at the hospital too… He wanted to see Frank.

At night, when he slept on Ray’s couch, he slept with a pillow under his head and another pressed between him and the back of the couch—pretending it was another body, imagining that it was Frank and clinging to those memories he had of Frank allowing him to share his bed.

He’d been in too much pain to cuddle or cling and he’d really only sought out the comfort of a close presence those night… Now, Gerard wanted the affection he’d been given when Frank had found him under the bed.

He wanted to be wrapped up in those strong, decorated, protective arms. He wanted shushed and comforted, to be called angel and gently rocked back and forth like a child. It was pathetic and childish, but he wanted it so badly. 

The longing left an ache in his chest that kept him up at night after a week without seeing or hearing from Frank. He couldn’t take it anymore. Once Ray was asleep, Gerard got up from the couch and crept into the man’s bedroom. He always kept the door open a crack, listening for Gerard in case he called or someone tried breaking in. It just made it easier for Gerard to sneak in without waking him. It was dark, but Gerard just got low to the floor and felt around until he reached Ray’s bedside table where his phone sat charging. 

Gerard unhooked it from the charger, grimacing silently at the quiet bleep the phone let out once it was disconnected and hurriedly lowered phone to the floor as the screen lit up. Ray let out a choked snore, and Gerard lowered himself further down onto the ground. When Ray gave no indications of further waking up, Gerard crawled back out of the room with the phone in his hand and stood up once he was in the living room. 

Without much thought, he walked over to his corner of Ray’s apartment and pressed himself between the wall and entertainment center again. His heart filled with dread, however, when he lit up the screen and was met with three rows of dots, nine dots in total. He had to guess Ray’s passcode, and was locked out of the phone for ten minutes three separate times before he finally got it right. 

Not wasting any more time, Gerard picked through Ray’s contacts until he found Frank and immediately pressed call. 

It concerned him that Frank picked up after the second ring. It was close to two in the morning and his friend really should’ve been sleeping for work. 

“Hello?”

“Frank?”

_“Gerard?!_ Wh-what happened? Why are you calling?”

“I… Nothing happened. I just…I miss you,” Gerard said, sighing and lowering his head as soon as the words were out. He sounded like such an idiot. 

“Oh… Well… You know it’s not safe to be calling me…”

“I know, but… I’m sorry if it puts you in danger or puts Ray in danger, I—I just… I needed to hear from you. I needed to know you’re okay.”

“I’m fine, Gee, just—just guarding the house. I took a couple weeks off work in case anyone…you know, tries to break in.”

“Has anybody—”

“No. I think they know you’re not here.”

“Then—Then it’s safe for me to come back, right?”

“Gerard, no. I don’t think you should come back here. You’re an easy target at my house. At Ray’s, they’d have to get you down five flights of stairs—”

“Or in the elevator. Please, Frank. Ray has nothing to do with this. Let’s not keep him involved in it.”

“I can’t bring you back here. It’s not…not safe.”

“But if no one’s come around—”

“Craig still sends the e-mails, Gerard. He knows I know where you are, he’ll know if you come back.”

“He… He has to give up sometime,” Gerard whispered, even though he knew Father’s patience was limitless. If he could keep Gerard in penance for a year, he could keep sending Frank threatening e-mails every day without a problem. 

“He’ll give up when he’s dead and not a minute sooner. And if he sends another person into my house—that’s how they’re going to end up: Dead.”

“Frank…”

“I bought a gun, Gerard. You don’t need to worry about me.” His voice was different from how Gerard remembered it. More calculating and cold. He was being driven mad with the paranoia, and he’d only gotten a taste of what Gerard had lived for years upon years. 

“Frank, please—”

“You need to get off the phone now. If Craig’s watching my calls, it’ll look really suspicious for Ray to call me at two in the morning.”

“Please don’t hang up. I-I’ve really missed you. I know you don’t want me to worry, but I do. I…I care about you. You’re—you’re my only friend other than Mikey and I don’t want you hurt…”

“Then you should hang up now,” Frank said after a long pause. 

“Frank, please—”

“It’ll be okay, Gerard. Try to get some sleep. If it’ll make you feel better I… I can maybe come over in couple days and visit. Will that help you feel better?”

“I guess,” Gerard whispered. He was relieved to hear from Frank and know he was okay—and that he was armed and able to protect himself—but hearing from him wasn’t the same as seeing him, holding him…being held by him. “I miss you, Frank.”

“I miss you too, Angel. Try to get some sleep. I’ll have Ray get you a burner phone tomorrow and…you can call me then. Okay?”

“Okay,” Gerard said, a strange, fluttering feeling in his stomach. He was excited, not just at the prospect of hearing from Frank again as soon as the next night, but because Frank proposed the idea. Frank _wanted_ to hear from him.

Frank liked him, too.


	16. Chapter 16

_Chapter 16_

Frank sighed as he hung up the phone. He had purchased a prepaid, cheap little flip phone for himself and one for Gerard and had already burned through half of the three-hundred minutes he’d bought to load both of them. Gerard had been desperate to hear from him, even though he’d just seen him to give him the phone the day before. He asked about Frank a lot— _a lot._

Was Frank okay? Had anyone gotten in his house? Had anyone tried since Gerard had left? Had Frank gone back to working? Was his boss angry? Was Frank angry at Gerard—because Gerard was sorry for this whole mess.

A lot of Gerard’s attitude seemed to have disappeared since he’d gone to stay with Ray. He didn’t lose his temper, he didn’t argue. He was passive and needy, his confidence seemingly crushed by the events that had transpired. Having Craig’s men come after him left Gerard terrified, desperate to feel safe and protected and willing to do anything—act in any way—that might make his only allies stay loyal to him. He knew that he was a risk and he knew how lucky he was to have a friend like Frank who was willing to protect him even though they only met through crazy, horrible circumstances. 

Things seemed to have calmed down though. Frank had been able to go back to work and when he returned home there were never any signs of vandalism. He still got the emails though from Craig, demanding to know where his property had been taking and promising more and more suffering for Gerard if he didn’t return soon. 

It gave Frank some satisfaction to know that all Craig could do was send emails and empty threats. Gerard was tucked away, safe, and there was nothing he could do about it. 

Until Frank and Ray ran out of money, that is. Keeping him hidden in Ray’s apartment could work for a few weeks, maybe even a month, but not much longer than that. Gerard would need to go out and find a job, but he was too much of a nervous wreck to keep one, and what if Craig found out where he worked or one of his friends saw him?

Frank was beginning to think he needed to pool money to send Gerard out of state, maybe set him up with a job and hotel room. Maybe somehow he’d be able to take care of himself…or he’d end up with another Dom who had a meaner streak in him than Craig. 

After the phone call, Frank went to his bathroom and showered, then readied himself for bed. He had to be up early for work and Gerard had kept him up talking more than Frank would’ve liked—but he couldn’t just tell Gerard to shut up it was time to go.

He liked him too much.

That, Frank was starting to realize, was a problem. He liked Gerard too much. 

It wasn’t love though—it was affection. He _liked_ Gerard. He liked that he had some attitude in him, he liked that he was needy when they spoke to each other, he liked that Gerard was _beautiful._ Hell, he’d been watching him in videos for so long, of course he was bound to like the real thing even more. 

But affection like that toward a person like Gerard was dangerous. Gerard could be a good friend, but more than that? It was too risky—on so many levels. Not only because of Craig, but because of Gerard’s problems and his addictions. Frank could be friends with an addict—he could offer support to a friend with addiction issues—but he couldn’t see himself being in a relationship and living with someone who lived that way. He wasn’t strong enough for it. He didn’t know how to help with that. He would get frustrated and snap—not the sort of thing a recovering addict needed. 

Not to mention Frank’s only issues. Control issues. He wasn’t good for Gerard in any way beyond a supportive friendship. No matter how much he liked Gerard, entering into a relationship with him would just cause them both pain.

Frank didn’t deserve relationships… Not after what he’d let happen with his last submissive, his last boyfriend. 

He tried to push the thoughts away as he got out of the shower and dried his hair, but he caught his reflection in the mirror and cringed. When those thoughts were in his head, all he could see in himself was a monster. Pairing those bad memories with Gerard—with the videos he used to watch of Gerard being tortured and raped—made everything worse. 

Frank wasn’t a good person. One charitable act didn’t change his past. He was evil. He wasn’t as sick as Craig, but he was no saint. 

Nothing he did pushed his bad memories away as he laid down in his bed. He saw flashes of blood, heard the crying and shrieking, saw his boyfriend’s angry, hurt face. He heard the words that man had spat at him, still tearful and choked up yet so resentful. Frank had pushed him too far. Frank disrespected his limits on purpose.

But he’d never meant to really hurt him. He’d never meant—

It didn’t matter.

He hurt his boyfriend. His reasoning didn’t matter.

( ) ( ) ( )

Gerard sat by the window, staring down at the road imagining that the hooded figures who occasionally walked by were Frank, coming to surprise him with a visit. Deep down he knew Frank wasn’t coming over tonight, but he liked hoping. 

“Hey, Gerard, I’m going to bed. You can watch the TV if you want, just keep the volume low, okay?”

“Okay,” Gerard said, turning away from window to pass Ray a quick smile. It wasn’t so bad here—not even half as bad as he’d anticipated. Ray took good care of him even if the health food he stocked up on was disgusting.

He’d even removed some of Gerard’s stiches at home so he didn’t have to make another appointment at the doctor’s. When an infection started up on Gerard’s back, Ray kindly bought anti-biotic cream for him and helped apply it. 

He didn’t even judge like the other busybody medical professionals Gerard had met over the years. He just did his job and left out the lecture on how stupid of a reason Gerard had for how his wounds had gotten there.

“Don’t forget, I’m going shopping after work tomorrow, so if there’s something you need just put it on the list. It’s on the fridge still, okay?”

“Okay,” Gerard repeated before turning back toward the window. 

He wished he could talk to Frank more, but they would run out minutes if he did and Frank said they needed to last at least two weeks. 

Two weeks. 

That meant Gerard wouldn’t get to see him for another two weeks at _least._ He hated that thought. He wanted to be with Frank, not Ray. He wished living with Frank didn’t put them both in danger. As safe as he felt here with Ray, knowing Craig couldn’t find him, it just made him worry that much more about his friend.

If someone broke in looking for him and hurt Frank in order to find him, Gerard could do nothing to protect him if he was at Ray’s apartment. If he were with Frank, he could at least turn himself over and spare Frank the suffering.

“Goodnight, Gerard,” Ray said as he went back to his room.

“Night,” Gerard mumbled after him, staring at a man walking his dog on the street below. 

He wished he could just wander the streets like that—unafraid, unrestricted. He hadn’t wandered freely in…months. Maybe years. Craig used to let him go shopping, used to let him out with a credit card to buy himself clothes and sweets, drawing pads and charcoals—all sorts of nice things.

Gerard really wished it hadn’t changed. The credit card was shitty payment for all the hell he put Gerard through behind their locked doors, but it was at least something. It was enough to make Gerard think that maybe Craig did love him, maybe he wasn’t good with words or actions but he could try to show his love with money. 

Money wasn’t love, though. Money didn’t make up for pain. Even if they went to court and sued Craig and got Craig put in jail, money from the settlement wouldn’t make up for it. Nothing would ever make up for it…

All Gerard could do was pray that Craig would forget him and forget Frank—leave them in peace so Gerard could start over. 

With Frank.

So he could start over with Frank. 

Gerard pulled himself away from the window and turned off the overhead light in the living room. Ray would be up early which meant Gerard would be woken up early. He had trouble falling back asleep in the apartment, not at all feeling secure when he was alone, so he would stay awake. If he didn’t want to be exhausted and paranoid with Ray gone, it was best he just went to sleep now. 

However, as soon as he laid down on the couch to rest, his mind started spinning even more. He wanted Frank. He wanted to be with Frank. 

It was a bad series of thoughts, but Gerard’s sleepless mind started to imagine what a life would look like with Frank. He was a Dom and that was intimidating, but he didn’t seem to be like Craig. He was single and he’d mentioned it was because of a mistake he’d made, a mistake he was sorry for…

Frank was at least empathetic. And he was handsome—very handsome. And he had such soft eyes, pretty eyes. 

And such a full, juicy lower lip. He looked so kissable.

Gerard wondered if they’d ever get a chance to kiss. It was a stretch—Frank didn’t like him like that, even if he called him Angel sometimes when he was panicking. 

Gerard needed to stop letting his mind wander this way. He’d just get his hopes up for something that would never happen. Like dates with Craig, or good days with Craig…

( ) ( ) ( )

Frank’s eye snapped open to the sound of a loud bang. His heart started pounding but all that followed was silence. Once he started to rationalize—trying to tell himself there was no threat, that he had been startled by a nightmare and nothing more—another sound came and Frank recognized it immediately as footsteps.

They were in his home. There was no mistaking it. 

Frank’s body began trembling as he sat up and reached over to his end table, grabbing his handgun and flicking off the safety. The streetlamp outside gave him just enough light to make out the shapes in his room, but he was afraid to turn on the light, not wanting the intruder to know he was awake. Not yet anyway. 

He swallowed hard as he tried to listen over the sound of his pulse in his ears. The footsteps came again, not at all light or cautious. Frank held onto the gun tightly, his finger on the trigger, ready to squeeze as soon any movement came on the other side of the door. 

It was one of Craig’s men, coming to look for Gerard—coming to harm Frank for hiding Gerard like Craig promised in his emails. 

Frank was sick of this. 

As quickly as the fear struck him, so came the anger—the wrath. Who did this man think he was? He didn’t own Gerard and he sure as hell didn’t own Frank. Frank refused to live in terror, to spend his days at work so tense and anxious he was constantly gagging, worrying about what could be happening to his home in his absence. 

No more. He would have no more of this bullshit. He wasn’t Craig’s submissive, he didn’t have to lie low and shake in fear of him the way Gerard did.

Gerard may have gotten him into this mess, but Frank was going to end it once and for all—and nothing settled an argument like a gunshot wound to the chest, or the neck, or the fucking face. 

Frank sat tense as he listened to the movements. No furniture was being tossed, nothing was being slammed or broken—the person here knew Frank was in his room, knew he was asleep and intended to leave it that way. He thought he was going to catch Frank off guard, but he was wrong. He was so fucking wrong.

He licked his lips he waited, raising the gun and aiming it at the door. When the footsteps drew nearer and stopped just outside of his bedroom door, Frank held his breath, scowling through the darkness and ready. 

Question in his head was not if not shoot, but when. Did he shoot now, maybe strike flesh and maybe just send a warning and let the man escape with his life? Or did he wait until the door was open, aim and then fire? 

When he heard the hand on the doorknob, Frank hesitated, but once he heard the door begin to creak open, he raised the gun a little higher and fired.

He felt a rush of heat go through his body when he heard a loud groan, but when he didn’t hear the man back off or fall down, Frank squeezed the trigger a second time, aiming a little lower. He hoped to get the man in the gut—wishing he could kill him but knowing that would just make more problems. 

This time the man yelped and collapsed, hitting the ground with a loud bang. 

Frank sat in bed panting, his hands shaking as he kept the gun pointed toward the door expecting the man to get up and barge in seeking revenge. When he heard the man continuing to curse and moan in pain, occasionally thumping his limbs or head against the floor, Frank lowered the gun and reached for his phone instead.

He tried to keep his eyes trained on the door, but had to look down in order to tap the keys. Still, he stared at the door and listened to the groaning as the 911 operator asked him the location of his emergency. 

Frank reported his address, then added in a voice that hardly shook, “I shot someone. I shot an intruder.” 

The operator demanded that he stay on the line and provide more information, asking if the intruder had been armed—if he knew the intruder, was the intruder still breathing.

Frank refused to move to go check, not sure if his legs could even support him. The door was kicked in, he told her—he’d heard it happen—and the cops could enter as soon as they arrived. He wasn’t going to leave his bedroom until the cops came.


	17. Chapter 17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is a little rocky and I'm a little uncertain about it, but I really wanted to update and thought I'd better do it while I had the drive. I apologize if it's confusing or wobbly. It was hard to get back into the mindset so some details may be vague or not worded the best, but I really gave it my all! Hopefully the next chapter will be better! Thanks for being so patient with me as I've gotten all distracted and lazy. I swear I didn't forget about this story, I just got stuck between two plot arcs and couldn't decide.

_Chapter 17_

The man outside his bedroom door was still moaning in pain when the cops arrived. He didn’t try to run away or hide and was the first person the police officers addressed when they arrived. Frank strained to hear the man’s voice, but his ears were still ringing from the gunshot. He had enough sense to change out of his pajamas before the cops arrived and had set his gun aside, making sure that if an officer barged into the room he wouldn’t still appear armed and dangerous. 

The officers announced when they were coming in and Frank sat on his bed waiting. He didn’t flinch as the door was pushed open. He knew he had done nothing wrong. He knew there were enough records to show he’d tried everything he could to stop these men from breaking in and coming after Gerard. 

That didn’t stop them from cuffing him—or from stuffing him in the back of their squad car after reading him his rights and escorting him out of his apartment. The flashing lights made more of a spectacle than ever, shining into every window and doorway. Frank could see the curtains parting as his neighbors peered out at him, judging him and wondering who it was being wheeled out on the gurney and put in the back of the ambulance. 

After being taken into the station, they ushered him into a small interrogation room where he was uncuffed and they left him with a stack of blank paper and a pen. He was to write down his statement, then step into the hall and call for one of the officers to retrieve it. 

Frank spent maybe thirty minutes on the page, sighing as he wrote down everything he could remember. He started with the home invasion, but couldn’t stop there—he wrote three pages (front and back) about Gerard and why he believed this man had invaded his home. He especially made sure to write about why he felt the need to get a gun as quickly as he could.

Possession of an unregistered weapon could get him three months in jail, and Frank wanted to avoid that at all costs. Before this whole mess, he’d been a good citizen. He had his flaws, but he didn’t have a criminal record and he didn’t want one because Gerard and Craig had dragged him into this mess.

When he finished his statement, he handed it off to the officer in the office down the hall, then returned to his interrogation room—and waited. And waited, and waited. He was aware of the camera in the corner watching him, knew that someone was probably in a control room analyzing his motions and behavior. Was he scared enough? Did he look nervous enough to be the victim?

It felt like hours had passed before the officer came in to talk to him. The man asked him to tell his story: Why did he have the gun in the first place? Did he know who he had shot? Did he _care?_ Was he on drugs or involved in the illegal sale of drugs?

Frank tried to find a way around sounding like a freak—like a psychopath not unlike Craig and his men—but in the end had to confess. He got the gun because of a previous home invasion—something he knew the officers had on record. He got the gun because someone named Craig was harassing him and sending men to intimidate him and his friend Gerard. Why? Because Gerard was Craig’s boyfriend, his “property,” and he didn’t want Frank involved with him.

About an hour into the interrogation, a man stepped into the room and revealed the identity of the man Frank had shot—and stated the wounds were superficial and he had already checked out of the emergency room. 

It was Craig.

Frank’s eyes widened with shock. _Craig?_ The man himself had come. And why? 

Frank didn’t know.

The officers seemed to pick up on his surprise and used it as ammunition against him.

Not who you were expecting? They’d asked. Why you think Craig wanted to harm you?

Was a kicked in door not enough of a reason? Was a ransacked apartment and a traumatized friend not a justifiable reason?

Frank began to grow anxious that he wouldn’t be leaving this police station. He was going to be arrested—he was going to be jailed, and a powerful man like Craig had the money and influence necessary to keep him there. His heart began pounding so hard he felt faint. 

This couldn’t be happening. This just couldn’t be happening.

Was this what Craig had meant when he left that letter on the bathroom stall? That passage from the Bible? Gerard was the key to the bottomless pit… 

A pit of despair? A pit of misery and self-loathing, rotting away in a jail cell for three months to life? If Craig somehow convinced them that Frank was guilty of nothing short of attempted murder, what could he do? 

His mind just kept racing with possibilities that only grew darker when that second officer returned with news that Craig had given a statement.

The first officer left then, locking Frank in the interrogation room for over an hour. The stress ate away at him so much he was nearly in tears by the time the man returned and began a new round of questioning, his demeanor completely changed.

According to Craig, he’d received a distress call from his beloved boyfriend Gerard claiming that he’d been kidnapped and beaten and was being held hostage in Frank’s home. The officer began unweaving and twisted and warped version of what Frank knew to be truth—a version of the tale where Frank was the villain and Craig had been as helpless as the victim: Gerard.

They’d gone to a bar, Craig said, and Frank had taken advantage of Gerard’s drunken state. He beat him and raped him, then left him for dead. _Craig_ had come to the rescue and got Gerard the medical treatment he needed, brought him home and nursed him back to health. Then he’d come home to an awful surprise—Gerard was gone and the cameras in the house showed that Frank had broken into his mansion and stolen him back. 

Craig had done everything he could to settle this without involving law enforcement—trying to avoid a scandal since Gerard hadn’t wanted to press charges (the merciful angel that he was)—and sent some friends to look for Gerard at Frank’s home. That was the cause for the “break in” that Frank had reported the first time. They’d come looking for Gerard who had been kidnapped, but couldn’t find him. 

“That’s not true,” Frank said, shaking his head defiantly as he stared at the table. Maybe he should ask for a lawyer, but he couldn’t afford one and anyone the state appointed could easily be bought by Craig. 

“Then what _is_ true? Because what it looks like is you kidnapped the poor man and you got this gun to keep him in line. We’ve got officers searching your place right now, and let me tell you this: They’ll find him. They’ll find where you hid him.”

“I didn’t hide him!” Frank protested. “He’s staying with my friend Ray. You can call him and talk to him. I-I bought the gun because they broke in and tore my house apart looking for him. He was _terrified!_ I found him hiding under the fucking bed to get away from those people! Craig is a _liar._ He’s the one who hurt Gerard in the first place. I told you that!”

“You say Gerard is with your friend?” The officer said, his tone indifferent.

“Yes. Do you want my phone? You can call him right now. He’ll answer.”

The officer just stared at him with doubt. They thought he was a criminal. They bought every single one of Craig’s lies.

( ) ( ) ( )

Gerard’s heart dropped into his stomach and he felt he might be ill. A cop had called him and started asking all the questions Craig promised him the police would ask when this whole mess began.

Everything went according to plan—everything always did when Craig was involved. The whole world was his chess board and Craig loved nothing more than a good game—a good win.

Everyone was a player in his games—every single person Craig ever met. Gerard was his pawn, not even his favorite pawn as it turned out, and now it was time for him to play the game by the rules he’d been given months ago. 

But he couldn’t do it.

His tongue felt heavy in his mouth and all he could do was hold the cell phone to his ear and stare at the wall.

“Sir? I just need you to come to the station and confirm some information.”

They told him Craig had been shot. That Frank had shot him and both of them were claiming to be the victim. The only neutral player in the game, it seemed, was Gerard and they needed him to identify which version of the story was true.

“I can’t see Craig,” Gerard whispered. He didn’t want to play this game anymore—not when he knew where it would lead. 

Craig gave him the rules before taking him to the club that night. It was time to get more money—time to pick another fool to trick and scam. Frank hadn’t been their target, though. The club owner was… 

Everything had seemed to go wrong. The abuse he endured that night was ten times worse than he’d expected, than what Craig warned him about. The agony of recovering—the blood and stitches and threats of a year spent in penance for not coming home… This wasn’t how it was supposed to have gone, but Craig didn’t care. He was going to have his way, and when his first plan went askew, he was quick to adapt and change the rules. 

“We can arrange for you to be taken into a room without seeing him. That’s not a problem. We just need you to come with some identification.”

Gerard took a deep breath, his whole body starting to shake. 

He knew what the rules were. He knew what he was supposed to say and what he was supposed to do, but two things were making that much harder than it should’ve been—than it had been the last four times Craig forced him to get involved in the cons. 

He’d been disobedient from the beginning, because Craig hadn’t been truthful. He was supposed to come to the hospital that night and rescue him and accuse Frank (or whoever had taken him) of kidnapping and assault. They were to him to court and sue for damages, make money off of Gerard’s wounded flesh.

Only Craig never came to the hospital. He’d gone away on vacation somewhere, probably hooked up with someone younger and prettier and forgot about his doting submissive—his damaged goods.

Gerard would never, _ever_ forget how terrifying it had been to not know who he was with or what would happen in the hours that passed. Craig’s calls didn’t soothe him—they were just ways for Craig to taunt him and hurt him more for fake transgressions.

And now?

Now Gerard was expected to turn on Frank—the only person who had ever showed him pure kindness and mercy—and he just couldn’t do it…

Maybe if Craig hadn’t kept threatening him with punishments and a _year_ in penance. Maybe if Craig hadn’t abandoned him with no knowledge of the changing game. Maybe if Frank hadn’t been so kind… Maybe _then_ he would’ve played his part like Craig expected of him.

Maybe if he hadn’t fallen in love with Frank…

“I’ll come. Just keep Craig away from me. I don’t want anything to do with him.”

The officer gave him the address of the police station—a place he’d already been though they acted as though they didn’t have record of his existence. 

He had a fear that Craig had paid them all off, but he couldn’t let this charade go on any longer. He was done. He was done with Craig.

He was so fucking done.

( ) ( ) ( )

Frank had been in the interrogation room for _sixteen hours_ before they finally, finally let him leave. He didn’t know whether it was daytime or night, he barely even knew what his own name was by the time he staggered onto his feet and made it into the hallway.

Something had changed after Gerard agreed to come to the station, but Frank was never told what. He was thanked for cooperating and was treated more like a human being for the first time that night, then was drilled with instructions. Bring the emails Craig had sent, provide a link for the videos (videos Frank never even _mentioned_ to them), make a detailed record of everything he could remember including times and dates and other witnesses if he could provide them.

Frank really wished the officer would write down a list of what he wanted because Frank just knew he wouldn’t be able to remember them all after he finally got to sleep.

“Am I getting arrested for the gun?” Frank asked as the officer escorted him to the door. 

“We took possession of the gun and we’ve issued a citation which Officer Stitzel will have for you at the desk to sign. There’s a court date you need to be present for, but since this is your first offense you won’t be seeing any jail time.”

“That’s good at least,” Frank said, still trying to make sense of what was going on but barely able to keep a thought in his head long enough to form a coherent sentence.

“You should consider yourself very lucky.”

“Lucky?” Frank said, rolling his eyes. Yeah, real lucky—held in a cold interrogation room all night with screaming fluorescent bulbs overhead, making his ears ring. That sounded _real_ lucky.

“This could’ve gone a lot worse if your friend hadn’t vouched for you,” the officer said, pausing and pointing toward a desk. “That’s where you’ll sign your paperwork.”

“Okay,” Frank said, waiting for further instruction before moving past where the officer stood. The last thing he wanted was to break some unspoken rule and end up behind bars after that God awful torture. 

“Your friend’s waiting for you in the lobby. We might give you a call in the next couple of days for help with the investigation. There are some optional protective orders with Officer Stitzel, but we doubt you’re going to be having any problems after this.”

“Right…” Frank said, squeezing his eyes shut in an attempt to rid them of the need for sleep. The officer gestured for him to continue on to the desk and Frank gladly obliged, signing his name on a ticket for fifteen hundred dollars that would take him months to pay off. 

“You’re lucky, you know,” the officer at the desk, Officer Stitzel, said.

“Yeah?” Frank said, sick of hearing that. He didn’t feel lucky.

“We went easy on you. You could get three years in jail for that handgun.”

“I could still get jail time,” Frank said. “I have to go to court.”

“I wouldn’t worry about it,” Officer Stitzel said, offering Frank a sympathetic smile that Frank didn’t understand. “That fine, though—that could’ve been a hell of a lot worse.”

“Fifteen hundred’s a lot,” Frank said.

“Better than fifteen thousand, isn’t it?”

“Yeah,” Frank said, eyebrows shooting up in surprise as he stared at the next document placed before him. A restraining order against Craig that Officer Stitzel began describing. 

Obviously something had turned in his favor, Frank thought as he signed his name again. 

Once the paperwork was finished, Frank was cleared to walk out to the lobby. The first person he saw was Ray, sitting with his head in his hands. Sitting beside him was Gerard who immediately got to his feet once he laid eyes on Frank. 

His face was overcome with grief and worry, and before Frank could even speak to him, Gerard had wrapped his arms around him in a tight hug.

“I told them everything,” he said, his voice slightly muffled by Frank’s shoulder. “I told them about Craig and—and all the bad things. I wasn’t going to let him do this.”

“Do what?” Frank asked, pushing Gerard back a step. 

Gerard just stared at him and bit his lip. 

“Let him do _what?”_


	18. Chapter 18

_Chapter 18_

Gerard’s mouth ran dry under the weight of Frank’s gaze. He knew he had to explain, and that Frank would be angry—rightfully so—but he had to try. Frank deserved the truth and Gerard wanted to prove his commitment to his new companion. He had affections for Frank. He cared for him in a way he’d never felt for Craig or _anyone._ He didn’t want to let that go—he didn’t want Craig to have destroyed _everything._

“I-I…I want to tell you everything,” Gerard said quietly. 

“Well you’d better fucking start because I’m _confused_ here, okay? I just got arrested and interrogated—because of _you.”_

“I know, and I’m _sorry._ I didn’t plan for this. I knew what would happen—kind of. I-I was never part of the whole thing. C-Craig makes his money in strange ways and…and you weren’t the target for this.”

“Just tell me what the hell you did,” Frank snapped.

“Frank,” Ray said, his tone soft but stern. They were in a police station and Gerard was terrified that Frank’s anger was just going to get all of them in more trouble. 

“Just tell me what happened,” Frank said, a little more quietly though his voice was just as hostile.

“Craig needed money s-so he was going to sue the owner of the club where we met—”

“Met? We didn’t _meet,_ Gerard. I _found you._ Thrown away like _garbage._ ” He was so angry and his rage cut Gerard to his core like a knife.

“T-The plan was to get me injured. That’s what he told me the first time when he talked about it. The plan was for Craig to let them hurt me then to step out for something or—or _leave,_ and then come back and say things got out of hand. But he _didn’t_ leave and it just got worse and he told me when it was happening that things had changed and told me he was going to leave me for him to find.” Gerard felt tears well in his eyes as he remembered that awful night. Things had spiraled out of control so quickly. It went from a routine scam to one deeper than that—a punishment. 

As he’d handcuffed Gerard into that stall, his heart had broken. He wasn’t sure if this was even a scam anymore or if he was just being passed off to someone else. All Craig had said to him was “if you can’t get it up for me, maybe you can for him.” Then he’d laughed and closed the door. 

After that, Gerard was with Frank—in a car, in an apartment, in a strange bed, in a hospital. He had to go through the horror of being abandoned, of being left with a stranger that even Craig didn’t know. 

“Until I talked to Craig on the phone I didn’t know he still had the scam in mind. I-I really thought he’d left me for good. B-But then he called and asked who I was with and all these questions and…I should’ve lied to him, I know that now. And I’m _sorry_ I didn’t.” He looked at Frank but saw no empathy in his eyes. Frank just wanted him to get to the point. “He told me he was going to find me and that we’d tell the cops you kidnapped me and raped me and all these awful things. I didn’t _want_ to, Frank. Honestly. I would _never, ever_ do that to you after how kind you’ve been.”

“If you weren’t going along with it, why didn’t you tell me from the beginning? Why not say ‘hey, my boyfriend’s a fucking con-artist. Maybe you should call the cops for me and we’ll get this sorted the fuck out!?’”

“Sir—If you keep raising our voice, you’ll be cited for disorderly conduct. If you want to scream at each other, go back to your own place, alright?” The officer at the desk informed him, looking at Frank sternly. 

Frank didn’t even apologize, he just looked at the man and then turned back to Gerard with all the hatred in the world. 

“When Daniel broke in and came after me, that’s when I knew I didn’t want to be a part of this—not any part of it. You _know_ I don’t love Craig anymore. You _know_ I’m not loyal to him—I’m loyal to you.” Gerard wished beyond anything else in the world that Frank would believe him, trust him just a little. 

“You could’ve told me at _any_ time that your boyfriend was a fucking con,” Frank hissed. “You didn’t and that tell me you _never_ planned to end the scam. You’d still be playing it now if your ass weren’t about to be thrown in jail for it.”

“That’s not true,” Gerard whispered, his heart breaking with the words. Why didn’t Frank believe him? Why couldn’t he calm down for just a moment and realize that Gerard was choosing him over Craig?—That he loved him more than he did Craig…

“It is true. Because you know you wouldn’t last five seconds in jail. You’d be someone’s bitch within the first hour—and let me tell you something.” Frank glowered at him, his teeth gritted though his lips twitched as if he were fighting to hold something back. The words, it seemed, got the best of him and shattered what was left of Gerard’s heart. “You fucking deserve it.”

( ) ( ) ( )

Frank was livid, still fuming even after Ray drove him and Gerard back to his apartment. The whole ride he chewed his lip in anger, every now and then turning around in the passenger seat to pass a glare to Gerard in the back. He started yelling at him again—like what he’d done to get asked to leave the police station unless he wanted charged with disorderly conduct—but Ray told him to knock it off and wait until they got back to his apartment, his _own_ apartment. 

“I just can’t believe this shit,” Frank hissed.

“Frank, you just need to relax,” Ray said, his tone strained. 

“Relax!? This jackass, fuckin’ sociopath almost got me killed!” Frank screamed. “Or haven’t you been listening!?”

“F-Frank, I really—”

“Shut up! Just shut up!” Frank screamed, glaring at Gerard who should know better than to even dare to look at him. 

Gerard broke down crying at that point and Frank just groaned and turned back to face the front. He wished they could just chuck Gerard out onto the street like the drugged up trash that he was. Frank was sorry he ever helped him—sorry he ever set foot in the bar that night. 

Gerard looked him straight in the face and _admitted_ that when the original plan—to entrap the owner of the Jailer’s Den—fell short, he and Craig had set their sights on Frank instead. Even though Frank had _nothing_ in his name. They would’ve sent him to prison for kidnapping, torture, and rape—then sued him for every cent he made working inside the hellish reformatory. 

That was how Craig made all of his money. That was how Gerard kept his pill habit going. 

So what if Gerard changed his mind and backed out? So fucking _what?_ The intention had still been there up until Craig sent his men to ransack Frank’s apartment to find Gerard. That seemed to be what scared him off the con-artist lifestyle for good and he switched his loyalties to Frank. 

Only Frank didn’t want them. He wanted _nothing_ to do with Gerard.

He didn’t care about the pending lawsuit, he didn’t care about what he stood to gain if he got involved with the case Gerard tried bribing him with. If he testified, it would be against _both of them._ All he wanted was the damage done to his bedroom door to be fixed and the blood to be washed out of his carpet.

If Craig went down, he wanted to see Gerard go down with him. He played Frank for a fool despite his kindness, despite his selflessness. He’d risked getting killed for that stupid pill head whore. His apartment had been destroyed—his whole _life_ had been flipped upside down because of Gerard. 

When they arrived at Frank’s townhouse, Gerard got out of Ray’s car and followed him. He had a bag with him of all the things he’d brought with him to Ray’s apartment when Frank had put him there for safekeeping, carrying it as if he expected Frank to just let him move back in like nothing happened. 

“Frank?—Please, Frank!” 

“What do you want!?” Frank snapped. “What else do you want from me?”

“I just want you to listen to me,” Gerard pleaded.

Frank rolled his eyes and then fixed his angry gaze on Ray’s car as it pulled away, the driver issuing no word of departure—running away from the situation. 

“Fine. Whatever,” Frank hissed, unlocking his door and going inside, making a point to swing the door backward so it hit Gerard when he tried to follow him in. He didn’t want Gerard in his home. He didn’t want Gerard anywhere near him.

“Frank,” Gerard squeaked, pushing the door open again after it struck him in the face. “I-I know you’re mad. I deserve it; I know that, but please—please listen to me.” 

“What do you want to say so bad?” Frank snapped. “You let that guy harass me for weeks! You never bothered to tell me what he was trying to do! I could’ve called the police from day one and _none of this would’ve happened!_ ”

“I know that—and I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking right back then. I-I was scared and I didn’t know where this was going to go—” he said, gesturing between himself and Frank as if something had ever or would ever exist between them, “—and I didn’t want to upset Craig if you were going to throw me out.”

“Well, now I’m throwing you out,” Frank said, surprised he was able to keep his expression blank as he said it. He had no trust left for Gerard and no empathy left either. He _hated_ him in that moment. He’d spent hours upon hours being interrogated for crimes he didn’t commit and it was _Gerard’s_ fault.

“What?” Gerard had the nerve to look shocked.

“You heard me. I want you to get your shit and get out. I don’t care where you go, but it can’t be here.”

“Frank, please—”

“I’ve made up my mind. I don’t want you here. I don’t _trust_ you.”

“I’d never _hurt_ you, Frank. I—”

“You keep saying that, but it means absolutely _nothing!_ You tried to get me put in jail!”

“No! Please, Frank! I’m begging you—just listen. Please. I-I never wanted _any_ of this!”

“And I don’t want to hear it! I just spent fifteen hours in an interrogation room because of you! Not because of _Craig._ Because of _you!_ Now get out!—Get your shit and get out!”

Gerard stared at him, crying and looking every bit as pathetic as he did the night Frank had found him—only this time Frank wasn’t overwhelmed with sympathy or love or affection. This time, Frank just wanted to punch him in his mouth and make it worse. “Get. The. Fuck. _Out,_ ” Frank repeated. 

Gerard stared at him a long time before ducking his head and whispering a frail, “Yes, sir.”

( ) ( ) ( )

Frank regretted his attitude almost immediately… Almost. He’d watched Gerard gather the things he had left behind at Frank’s, watched him stand in the doorway expectantly—hoping Frank would change his mind—watched him cry as he left and closed the door behind him.

Frank had sank down onto his couch with his head in his hands, letting all the emotions wash over him. He was angry and exhausted—nervous, even still. He had a massive fine he needed to pay, but if he sued Craig, that should take care of it. All of it and then some. 

The man was practically a millionaire, wasn’t he?

But Frank didn’t want to deal with it. He didn’t want to deal with the fact that Gerard still wasn’t who he’d thought he was. He didn’t _know_ Gerard. It didn’t matter how fond he’d been of him. It didn’t matter how much he liked him. What mattered was Gerard was owned by Craig. Craig was the puppet master and Frank would never know when the charade would truly end. 

He’d fallen asleep on his couch and woke up the next evening overwhelmed with regret. Completely overwhelmed.

His entire body shook as he remembered how terribly he’d acted, and that sense of dread grew worse and worse as he realized he had no way at all to get back in contact with Gerard. The phone he’d given Gerard so they could talk when he’d been at Ray’s sat forgotten on Frank’s counter. 

Even so, Frank took the phone and went through it, sending a text to Mikey’s number and then calling it when he received no answer. Gerard’s brother didn’t pick up—either ignoring the call or unaware of it—so Frank left a message.

Days passed but he never heard back from anyone except the police who encouraged him to join in the case Gerard had against Craig.

Hoping he might see Gerard again, Frank agreed but all he found was paperwork and requests for all of his emails and archived photos and videos Craig had ever sent him. It was embarrassing and shameful and Frank hated himself more and more when he handed it over.

After he turned over the videos contained in “Father X’s” emails, Frank made himself watch them over again. He didn’t see a heartless pill-head being subjected to the will of a psychotic priest. He saw a broken man being tormented by a power-hungry monster. He watched a manipulated child cry and scream into a gag—pleading for mercy he wasn’t going to get. The child a dealer and an addict. A child who’d run blindly toward the only provider of affection he could find, the only stability in his crazy life.

And that stability had only turned to a living nightmare. He paid for shelter with his flesh. He paid for a sense of value with his blood. 

He’d let Craig break him and then Frank had only served to further his destruction. 

That look Gerard had given him as he’d stood in the doorway…it haunted him. It was the second time someone he cared about, someone he loved and had meant to protect, looked at him with hurt and betrayal. After what happened with his last partner—after what he’d done to Henry—Frank promised he’d never let anyone down that way again. 

And yet here he was… He’d broken Gerard’s heart when he didn’t have to. He had a right to be mad and he could live with himself for yelling at the other man, but he should’ve left it there. He should’ve asked Ray to watch him one night more. He should’ve held back. Why couldn’t he have just held back?

Nearly a month went by yet Frank still struggled to get his things in order the way they’d been before Gerard—before the mess. He’d heard nothing back about the case, heard nothing back from Mikey no matter how many times he called… All he had were bad memories and a messy apartment—a bloody carpet, a blood-stained bathroom, a bloodied mattress he couldn’t afford to replace with the payment he was making on his unregistered handgun citation. 

Frank spent most of his free time sleeping on his couch now that he had no money for any kind of entertainment. He’d had to get rid of cable television to afford payments on his fine—trying to pay as much as he could as fast as he could to put it behind him—and couldn’t bring himself to listen to music to fill the silence. All he wanted to do was sleep. 

And keep sleeping.

Frank was partaking in his favorite activity on a particularly quiet Wednesday night when a loud banging roused him. He sat up on his couch and stared at the door a moment, not sure at first if the knocking was at his door or in his dream—then it came again and he stumbled onto his feet. 

When he reached the door he had to stand on tip-toe to look out the peephole, part of his sleepy, delirious mind sure it would be Craig outside the door. However, instead of the sadistic priest, Frank stared out at Gerard’s brother who pounded his fist on the door again. 

“Shit,” Frank whispered under his breath, undoing the deadbolt and lock. He pulled the door open only to have Mikey shove it open the rest of the way, nearly causing him to lose his footing and fall backwards. 

Mikey said nothing as he sauntered in, walking as if he owned the place—sunglasses down over his eyes, blonde hair pushed back off his face. 

“Where the fuck’s his shit?”

“What?” Frank asked, still blinking the sleep out of his eyes. 

“His shit—Gerard sent me to get the rest of his shit. Said he wanted to come himself but he’s too afraid of what you’d do to him.” 

“Do to him?—Fuck. I wouldn’t _hurt_ him, Mikey,” Frank said, closing the door as Mikey made his way into the apartment, kicking the coffee table in front of Frank’s couch as he went. His next step was to tear the cushions off the couch and toss them toward the kitchen. “What are you looking for!?” Frank snapped, catching one of the cushions and holding onto it—wondering if he’d need it for a shield at some point during the exchange. 

“He said he left his sketchpad and his ‘collar,’” Mikey said, turning back toward Frank with a furrowed brow. Even with the dark lenses concealing his eyes, Frank could sense the rage coming from them.

“I…I haven’t seen either of those anywhere. Trust me. I looked for his stuff. The only thing he left was the cell phone I bought him.” Frank walked slowly toward his kitchen counter, keeping his eyes trained on Mikey, and grabbed the little black phone. “This is it.”

“No—He told me he forgot his sketchpad and his collar. He didn’t care about the book, but he wants his collar. He says you don’t need to have it.” Mikey scowled at him a moment longer and then went into the bedroom.

Frank dropped the couch cushion and hurried after him, terrified of what the enraged man might do to the rest of his belongings. He was obviously pissed about what had happened between Frank and his brother, and Mikey wasn’t the type to hold back on his anger. 

“I don’t know where he would’ve put his collar. I remember bringing it to him, but I haven’t seen it since. Honest,” Frank insisted, cringing as Mikey started tearing the drawers out of his dresser—letting them crash onto the floor and spill their contents. “Would you stop!? Please! I didn’t mean to hurt him—stop breaking my stuff!”

“Your _stuff?”_ Mikey snapped, yanking the last of Frank’s drawers out. “You don’t want me breaking your _stuff?”_

“No!” Frank called, licking his lips anxiously. He didn’t know what to do—whether he should wait for Mikey to calm down so he could reason with him or if he should just call the cops. Deep down he truly didn’t want Mikey to leave. The man was his only connection to Gerard whom he wanted so badly to talk to again. He wanted to apologize and make up for how he’d acted. He’d been angry that day and exhausted. He hadn’t meant to be so cruel…

“What about Gerard, huh? You don’t want me breaking your ‘stuff,’ but what about when you broke my brother’s _heart?_ What about that!?” Mikey didn’t wait for Frank to answer. He whipped around and grabbed the foot of Frank’s bed. In no time at all he had it lifted and tipped onto its side—the mattress and headboard crashing over against Frank’s end table, crushing his alarm clock which let out a horrid screeching noise as the wood beneath it gave way. 

Frank moaned and fisted his hands in his hair as he watched Mikey start tearing into the luggage he’d had stored under his bed. It was from the second suitcase that the small, black and pink collar tumbled free. Mikey tossed the suitcase against the wall and leaned down to snatch the leather strap up from the floor. 

“Mikey… I-I’ve wanted to talk to him for a while. I’m _sorry._ It was just after the interrogations and the cops, I—”

“I don’t want to hear your fucking excuses,” Mikey said, glaring at Frank through those dark lenses. “He had to go back to our parents’ house. Do you have _any_ idea what my dad has put him through? You’re lucky he’s still breathing because if something had happened to him—if he hurt himself because of you—I’d burn this shithole down with you tied to that fuckin’ bed, you heartless asshole. I’d burn you alive.”

“Mikey, please—I didn’t want this to happen. I wasn’t in my right mind, I—”

“Did I not just fucking say I don’t want your excuses? You could’ve called _me_ before you threw his ass to the curb like trash. You could’ve given him a place to go first! Not leave him to walk the streets until he found me!”

“I know. I fucked up, okay? What more do you want? If I could take it back I _would._ I love him him—don’t you get that!? I didn’t want him on the street, I just…” Frank caught himself mid-sentence and shook his head. He didn’t even know what he was saying anymore except that he was sorry and he wished he could take it back. “Is he nearby?” Frank asked, shaking his head again, trying to clear his thoughts. “Can I see him?—If I could just talk to him, I feel I could make this right.”

“Make it right? He’s tore up over you! He trusted you. He gave up on Craig—he flipped on _Craig_ to protect you. Maybe that doesn’t mean anything to you, but look at it this way: Gerard does everything Craig says. He has for his entire fucking life. No matter what I said or Mom said, he wouldn’t listen. Everything was about Craig. Then you came along and suddenly it’s all about you.”

“If I could take it back, I would,” Frank said. It was the only argument he had. He cared about Gerard and he hated himself for giving in to the anger and turning on him so quickly. “Please… Just tell me where I can find him, or—or if I could get a number to call him. Anything. I want to make it right.”

“Well you can’t,” Mikey snapped, walking past Frank to return to the living room. “Where’s his fucking sketchbook?”

“I don’t know…” Frank said, following him helplessly. “I can look for it so you don’t have to waste your time. Just tell me an address and I’ll take it to him.”

“You want an address?” Mikey snapped turning away from Frank’s television. He was dangerously close to smashing it and Frank knew that. 

“Mikey, please…”

“He’s at Craig’s house. Our dad got in a fight with him so he left.”

“B-But he’s not with Craig, right?” Frank said, his chest tightening with fear. “Please don’t tell me he’s with Craig.”

“Craig’s in fucking jail, you moron. Not that you care. You can quit with the fuckin’ act. It’s not going to get you anything from me. You showed just how much you cared about my brother when you kicked him out with _nothing._ ”

“Mikey, I was wrong. I fucked up, okay!? I fucked up. I wasn’t thinking. Just give me a chance to prove how much I care—because I do. I-I…I care about him.”

“You wanna prove you care?” Mikey asked, tilting his head to the side. 

“Yes,” Frank insisted, trying to sound as wholly genuine as possible. 

“Fine.” 

Frank flinched when, all of a sudden, Gerard’s unfurled collar was chucked toward his face. He managed to reach up in time to catch it before it struck his face.

“Take it to him. But if I find out you hurt him again, you’re gonna find out I wasn’t joking about burning this place down with you inside it.” Mikey lowered his sunglasses just a moment, fixing Frank with a cold stare. “I mean it. Hurt him again and you’re fuckin’ dead. He wouldn’t let me hurt Craig, but he doesn’t need to know shit about what I could do with you.”

“I won’t hurt him,” Frank said, swallowing hard. “I promise. Just give me another chance. I can prove it.”

“Yeah, you’d better,” Mikey said, looking from Frank to the television set and back. “You’d fuckin’ better.” 

Frank waited for the moment to come when Mikey would grab the television and throw it or smash it with his foot, but it never came. He righted his sunglasses and made his way toward the door, opening it and not bothering to close it behind him once he’d gone. 

Frank looked down at the heavy collar in his hand, examining the small, pink threads. They seemed so innocent, so delicate compared to the black leather and all of the pains and sacrifice it signified.


	19. Chapter 19

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This update is a little short, but I'm still taking a moment to regroup and decide what form the final chapters are going to take. Thanks for being so patient with me and my slow updates!

_Chapter 19_

Frank felt his stomach tighten as he walked up the front steps of Craig’s mansion. Mike was less than one step behind him, stepping on the back of Frank’s feet every time he climbed a stair—nearly causing him to fall on the last step. It was Mikey who knocked on the door, but he stepped back to stand behind Frank when the door opened. The chain lock was still in place, and the only part of Gerard’s face Frank could see against the darkness within the house was a sliver of pale skin framed by black hair and one dark, sleepless eye.

“G-Gerard?” Frank stammered.

“Frank?” Gerard’s eye turned from Frank to Mikey who nodded his head. Once Gerard seemed to realize he wasn’t about to be attacked, he closed the door in order to undo the chain lock and reopened it. “What is he doing here?” Gerard asked his brother. 

“He wanted to come see you,” Mikey said.

Gerard was quiet a moment, looking them both over, then stepped backwards and motioned for them to come inside. The lights were all off and most of the curtains were drawn, giving the house a cold, isolated feeling. 

“Uh… How—How have you been?” Frank asked, biting his lip as he cast his eyes down to the floor. Gerard looked anxious and timid, his arms crossed over his chest.

“Fine,” Gerard whispered.

“Can—Can we have a minute?” Frank asked, looking over his shoulder at Mikey.

“A minute? Last time I left you alone with my brother—”

“Mikey, just go,” Gerard said, rolling his eyes. 

“I’m not going anywhere. Anything he has to say, I have a right to hear.”

“No you don’t! This isn’t about you. Can you please just go sit down in the living room? I…I want to talk to Frank in private.”

Mikey gave an exasperated sigh and fled the room, slamming his shoulder into Frank’s as he went by. Moments later, the sofa—or perhaps it was a chair—gave a loud grunt as Mikey dropped down onto it with enough force to cause damage. 

“Why are you here?—Come to rub it in that I’m back at Craig’s?”

“No—No. I just wanted to talk to you. I… I wanted to apologize for how I acted. I was angry and I shouldn’t have taken it out on you like that. I regretted it the moment you were gone. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

“Yeah, well… It’s in the past, right? Did Mikey get my things?” Gerard looked down at the floor and shuffled his feet anxiously. 

Frank didn’t know what to say to comfort him or if he even had a right to try. All he knew was that he’d kicked Gerard out in his time of need and now he hated himself for it. 

“I have your…your collar,” Frank said, taking the strap of leather out of his pocket and handing it over to Gerard. He took it in his hands and looked it over, then set it aside on the kitchen counter and started to pour himself a glass of water. 

“Did Mikey tell you I had to move back in with my parents?” He said, not looking away from the sink as he spoke. 

“Yeah. He said… He said something about your dad—”

“Pushed my down the stairs. Hit my mother when she tried to stop him. It’s really no surprise I ended up with someone like Craig, is it?” Finally he looked back at Frank, a sad smile on his lips.

“Gerard, I can’t even begin to tell you how sorry I am for all of this. I’d do anything to take it back—anything.”

“I had a feeling that when the truth came out, you’d be angry. I really should have expected you to throw me out.”

“Is there anything I can do to…to make it up to you? I miss you, Gerard. I worry about you all the time.” Frank swallowed hard and slowly stepped over to the sink, placing his hand on Gerard’s shoulder. 

Gerard looked at his hand, then took a slow sip from his glass of water. 

“Please… If there’s anything I can do to make it up to you, let me know. I don’t want to lose you.”

“Why?” Gerard asked, setting his glass down and pulling away from Frank’s touch. 

“Why?—Why what?”

“Why do you want me around so badly? Last time I checked, I was just a selfish con-artist bent on sending you to prison.”

“I was stupid, Gerard. What else can I say? I’d been in jail—I’d been interrogated for hours. I wasn’t even in my right mind.”

“So… What? I’m supposed to just forget everything you said?”

“No, but I don’t want to lose you. I really care about you. Can’t we work on this?”

“Work on what? You made it clear that there’s nothing between us. Not any single thing. We’re not friends. I’m just a piece of trash you found in the men’s room at a sex club.”

“Please don’t say that. Gerard, I’m _sorry._ I love you. I don’t want to lose you from my life…”

“You… You _love_ me?” Gerard asked, his eyes narrowing. “Don’t go spitting out that word like you have Goddamned idea about what it means! You’re just as bad as Craig! You’re just another perverted fucking freak! Your idea of love is to beat someone down until they feel like shit and _can’t_ leave you! I’m done with that lifestyle! I’m done being around people who make me feel like I’m nothing! I’m going to take Craig for everything he’s got—I’m going to sell this place and move to the city. Get away from freaks like _you.”_

Frank stared at him a moment, the words cutting him deeper than he expected. It reminded him of Henry—the words Henry had said before he stormed out. 

“I never meant that you were trash,” Frank mumbled.

“You don’t have to say it when you treat me that way,” Gerard spat. “Thanks for bringing me back my collar. If you find my sketchbook…just burn it. I don’t even want it anymore.” Gerard turned to look out the window over the sink. He looked so hurt and haunted. Frank knew Gerard wanted him to leave, but Frank couldn’t bring himself to do it. 

“I know you’re mad at me—you have a right to be. You have _every_ right to be…but I miss you. I can’t live with myself after what I’ve done. I had no right to hurt you. You didn’t deserve that.”

“Well, according to you, I deserve to get raped in jail. Isn’t that what you told me?”

“I was just mad—”

“I don’t care! Who says that to someone!? Especially after all the shit I went through? I should’ve just played along with Craig! I should’ve just done exactly what he wanted, because I can guarantee that there’s nothing he could do to me that would’ve hurt as bad as the shit you said!”

Frank bowed his head at that, defeated. Why had he let his rage get the best of him? Why couldn’t he have just shut his mouth instead of lashing out at the nearest victim? Gerard had deserved to answer for what he did, but using him as a punching bag wasn’t fair. Sending him out to wander the streets completely helpless wasn’t fair…

“Gerard… Please. I know I what I said was messed up and it was wrong—I was wrong to say all that. I’d take it back if I could. I just want a chance to make it up to you. It doesn’t have to be right now, but I’d do _anything_ for you forgiveness.” 

“My forgiveness?” Gerard said, snorting as if Frank had told him a joke. 

“I’ve fucked up a lot in the past and I’ve never had the chance to make it right. I want to make it right with you. I’d do anything—”

“You’d do anything?” Gerard interjected, looking from the window to Frank—his expression indifferent.

“Anything,” Frank repeated. “Anything you want—anything you need. Just give me the chance to make it up to you.”

Gerard stared at him, looking him up and down before picking up his water glass and taking another sip. 

“Do you want to stay here tonight? We could order pizza,” Gerard said. Somehow his tone didn’t sound as friendly as his invitation. 

“Alright—sure.”

“We should probably get a few pizzas… Mikey eats a lot. He’s been staying here with me since I moved in. It keeps him off the streets.”

“That’s good. That’s really nice of you to do for him.”

“He’s my brother. I love him. You’d be surprised, but people don’t usually leave the people they love to wander the streets.”

Frank ducked his head, coming up with no response to the jab. 

“We may as well get three pizzas,” Gerard said, stepping away from the window and making his way into the living room. Frank followed after him, but was reluctant to sit down. Gerard sat by Mikey on the couch—Mikey who looked at Frank with stern amusement—and took out a cell phone from his pocket. “What do you want on your pizza?” Gerard asked, looking at Frank coldly. 

“I want a supreme,” Mikey said. “With that extra thick crust—and extra cheese. If you don’t say extra cheese, then there’s none on there.”

“I know what you get,” Gerard said, looking at his brother with annoyance. “Do you want the boneless wings again too or is one pizza going to be enough for you?”

“I had lunch. Pizzas good.” After the brothers sorted out their business, both sets of eyes turned to Frank.

“What do you want?” Gerard asked, staring at Frank coldly. In a way, it didn’t feel like he was asking about pizza.

( ) ( ) ( )

Gerard kept his eyes on Frank for every second that he was in the house. He didn’t know why Mikey brought Frank here, but no matter how badly he wanted to, he couldn’t send the man away. He’d missed Frank—at least, at the beginning he had. That pain and loneliness had morphed almost completely into hatred, but having the man come around and plead for forgiveness gave Gerard some satisfaction.

Craig used to do that, though. He’d take things too far and apologize and promise to change—promise to make it up to him—then turn around and slip back into the same old behaviors. 

Frank wasn’t like Craig, though. Frank even offered to pay for the pizzas when they arrived. He was doing his best to suck up to them, and it seemed to be working with Mikey. Gerard wished he could trust his brother’s judgment, but Mikey couldn’t even work up the sense to stop sleeping with girls who had husbands or fiancés. 

To be honest, Gerard didn’t _want_ to let Frank in again, but being trapped in this house all alone was almost as bad as living there with Craig. The fear never left him, the nightmares startled him awake nearly every time he slept, and Mikey was hardly a reliable companion. He would always disappear in the middle of the night—the time Gerard needed him the most—and wouldn’t be back until dawn. Then he’d just sleep all day, working the drugs and liquor out of his system. 

Having Frank around would at least be one way to feel secure at night. He wasn’t afraid of Frank beating him or raping him. More than anything, he didn’t want to open himself up to be attacked again like the last night they were together. He would never forget the words Frank spoke to him in anger. They cut him like knives, over and over. They could’ve driven him mad if he’d let them.

In all his life, he’d just wanted to feel valued and desirable. He wanted to be _wanted_ by someone—anyone. Now, however, his standards had risen. He wasn’t going to let himself be manipulated like that again. He had to learn to care for himself, but he was truly hoping that didn’t mean he had to be _alone_ all the time. 

They watched television while they ate and though Gerard kept quiet, Frank and Mikey talked about the show and movies they’d seen. Every now and then, Frank—who had decided to sit on the floor instead of one of the available chairs—would look up at Gerard. He never said anything, just stared. He was waiting for Gerard to make the next move and Gerard appreciated that.

Frank was sitting at his feet, literally groveling at his feet, and Gerard had never felt better. Let him stew a few more days, Gerard thought. Let him wonder if Gerard was going to forgive him and welcome him back into his life. Let Frank grow sick with anxiety.

Let him suffer just a little bit longer, Gerard thought. After they’d eaten, Frank took it upon himself to do the dishes which suited Gerard and Mikey well enough. Gerard stood in the kitchen watching him, hoping to make him uncomfortable without having to comment or criticize him on the way he washed his dishes. Craig had a system for how the dishes had to be rinsed, how they had to be set in the drying rack (or how they were to be placed in the dishwasher if there were enough dishes to need the machine). According to Craig, everything Frank was doing was wrong.

Gerard didn’t have the nerve to tell him that, though. He was angry with Frank, but he didn’t want the man to leave. Apart from Mikey, Frank was his only friend in the world and no matter how bitter he was, he had to show Frank some respect. 

“So, are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Mikey asked, keeping his voice low as he came to stand beside Gerard in the kitchen. They were far enough back from the sink that there was no way for Frank to discern their words over the rushing of the water coming from the faucet.

“What are you thinking?” Gerard asked, looking at his brother out of the corner of his eyes. 

“Keep him here—use him like a slave for a little bit and show him what it feels like to live on the other side for once,” Mikey said, chuckling a little as he watched Frank do the dishes. 

“That could be fun,” Gerard said, toying with the idea though he knew he couldn’t bring himself to follow through with it. Leave it to Mikey to be the hostile one—he had the personality to play it off. If Gerard was cruel, it would just drive Frank away.

He was scared to be hurt by Frank again, but he was so much more terrified of being left on his own. One day, he knew, Mikey was going to go out and he wasn’t going to come back—either he’d hook up with a new girl or he’d run off or he’d just…die. Gerard would be alone in Craig’s house, worried that every noise was one of Craig’s men coming to get him. He had an alarm system, but even changing the code didn’t make him feel safe.

He needed someone with him—anyone—and Frank, who had shot one of Craig’s men, was clearly strong enough to work as a protector. 

“Are you staying in tonight?” Gerard asked his brother.

“I wasn’t planning on it. I was going to go to Shawna’s. I need a fix,” Mikey said. He said it with no shame in his voice at all. Gerard was trying so hard to stay clean through all of this, even though the temptation to give in and go hunting for pills with his brother seemed insurmountable. He had prescription anti-anxiety medications and sleeping pills, and he was determined that those be the only drugs he took—and that he’d take them as they were prescribed.

“You can’t stay? Just tonight?”

“I… I need a fix. What more do you want me to say?”

Gerard sighed and moved back into the living room to sit down. Mikey followed him, his demeanor suddenly more irritable than he had been before. He was anticipating another lecture, or for Gerard to tell him “so long as you’re in my house, you won’t be keeping up that behavior,” but Gerard wasn’t going to dare push his brother away. He couldn’t change Mikey. He could tell him he was concerned about him, that he loved him and wanted him to get clean, but he couldn’t tell him he’d throw him out for doing drugs. His only request was that Mikey didn’t bring them into the house—not with the police coming over so often to work on their investigation. 

“What, are you mad at me now?” Mikey snapped. 

“No… I was just going to ask Frank to stay. I’d feel safer with you here, too.”

“If you’re scared of him, don’t ask him to stay the night,” Mikey said, as if it were that simple—and maybe it was. Leave it to Gerard to make everything harder than it had to be… “You’re not going to sleep with him are you?”

“No! I just don’t like being here by myself all the time.”

“I can never figure you out, you know that? This guy destroyed you. What do you want _him_ around for? You’re loaded, Gerard. You’ve got Craig’s house, his _bank accounts._ You can have anybody you want. What are you keeping him around for?”

“He’s the only friend I have. Besides you. I don’t want to lose that, even if I don’t particularly trust him that much…” 

“Whatever. It’s your life. I’m not going to tell you what to do. But if he hurts you again, tell me—‘cause I promised him I’d set his house on fire if he did anything to upset you.”

“If he does, I’ll be sure to let you know,” Gerard said, rolling his eyes. Leave it to Mikey to bring out the death threats. He was so afraid Mikey’s big mouth was going to get him in trouble. Either he’d stand up to the wrong person and get shot or he’d actually follow through on one of his threats and end up in jail. They’d been separated for so long because of Craig…Gerard forgot how stressful his relationship with his brother truly was. 

“You’d better. I don’t want to lose you again.” Mikey stared at him as he said it, making sure Gerard met his eyes before looking away. He was trying to show how much Gerard meant to him and how painful their time apart had been for him without getting sappy and all cliché. 

“I promise you won’t lose me.” Gerard had fought so hard to keep himself sane through all of this. He wasn’t going to let Frank break him—or cause him to relapse. He didn’t want to be a pet anymore or a slave to someone else’s will. He hadn’t gone down into the basement since he got back into the house and he never intended to again—unless he chose to sell the place and move. He wasn’t going to leave all that evidence behind for someone else to find.

Though he would feel better if all those photos and prints that lined Craig’s dungeon walls were burnt… Gerard didn’t have the stomach to go down there and face them, but he knew someone who did.

Someone in his debt and eager to make amends. 

Let Frank do it. Let Frank go down in the basement and face all the horrors Gerard had endured. Let that be _his_ penance for his cruelty. Maybe he’d had a right be angry, maybe he had all the right in the world to cast Gerard out onto the streets like trash, but if he was feeling guilty for it now, Gerard was willing to use that to his advantage. 

As soon as Frank finished the dishes, Gerard spoke his request. Frank agreed as readily as if Gerard were his master and he’d given a command. It would be a lie if Gerard said the thrill of power didn’t give him a small bit of satisfaction.

**Author's Note:**

> Follow me on Twitter @Jatty_Sinful!


End file.
